Warp (9 page)

“What do you think I was doing sitting up there on that stupid shelf? I'm pretty sure there's a blind spot there, where the cameras can't reach. I doubt they monitor twenty-four hours anyway. And who do you think they were looking at the whole time I was on the phone, camera-boy? You, that's who.”

Hollis was silent for a few seconds.

“Well, I always wanted to be on TV,” he said finally.

His resources of indifference were immense.

They walked together as far as Central Square, a broad, complicated intersection where the residential neighborhoods of Cambridge started to give way to the poorer, more industrial zone of Cambridgeport. It was a bad area, and even this late at night there was a lot of activity: cops, homeless people, prostitutes, hostile young men, white, black, and Hispanic, all milling around aimlessly. The only stores open were a Rite Aid and a Dunkin' Donuts that did its business through a window in a metal shutter. Every possible surface—lampposts, bus shelters, construction sites, the stairs down to the subway—was covered with cheap paper fliers. One of the buildings on the square was burned out and sagging in on itself.

A little past the square an enormous old brick warehouse took up an entire block. It had the words
STORAGE WAREHOUSE: FIREPROOF
painted along one blind wall in gigantic white letters fifteen feet high; someone had blackened out the first few to make it read,
RAGE WAREHOUSE: IREPROOF
. Except for a few irregularities in the upper stories, it was built in the shape of a perfect cube. Naked orange security spotlights were bolted to the outer walls.

Alix turned in at the side street before it and walked as far as the warehouse's front entrance, a cement loading dock with massive metal double doors painted battleship gray, where she stopped. Set in one of the big doors, like a pass door in a portcullis, was a smaller door with a regular brass doorknob.

Hollis looked around in the sky for the moon, but he couldn't find it, even though the sky was clear. Either it hadn't risen yet or it was blocked by the brick bulk of the warehouse. Somewhere off in the distance, in an indeterminate direction, somebody was doggedly improvising jazz, unaccompanied, on a tinny old piano.

Alix clicked her tongue again.

“What's that noise you keep making?” said Hollis.

Instead of answering, she stuck her tongue out at him for a second, and he caught a glimpse of silver metal.

“I got it done a few weeks ago,” she said. “The swelling just went down. Do you have any? Piercings, I mean?”

He shook his head. Now that he noticed, she had a tiny silver ring in her eyebrow, too.

“Maybe when I get some cash,” he said. “At this point I can barely keep my hair blond.”

“How come you don't have any cash?”

“I don't know,” said Hollis. “I get that one a lot.”

They stood facing each other in the pinkish light of the loading dock.

“So this is where you live?” said Hollis.

“Sure is.”

“I didn't even know they even had apartments in here.”

“Ours is the only one.”

She stood with her hands on her hips, but she wasn't looking at him; she was looking off into the darkness. It wasn't quite as cold as it was before—they were out of the direct force of the wind. A pair of motorcycles went by on Mass Ave, and the noise from the pipes was so loud they had to wait a few seconds before either of them could say anything.

Finally, Alix went over to the small door that was set in the larger one.

“Watch.” She showed him her empty hand, palm open, both sides. Then she held it up in front of the door, where a doorbell would have been.

“Nothing up my sleeves.”

A little green LED on the doorjamb lit up, and the lock buzzed open.

She held the door for him, and he stepped through.

“Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.”

Inside it was completely dark except for a glowing dot in the distance. As he came closer it turned out to be an elevator button down at the far end of a corridor. Alix pushed him down the hall ahead of her, with her hand between his shoulder blades.

“It's like that scene in
Diva,
” he said. “The elevator shaft is empty, and I plummet down it to my death.”

“A little trust, please.”

She hit the button, and far away above them in the building Hollis heard and felt old, heavy machinery engaging. The darkness in the hallway was total: he closed his eyes, and there was no change at all. It was both disorienting and comforting at the same time. He leaned back against the cinder-block wall behind him; the coolness felt good against the back of his head. He felt almost sober now: the drinks had left him with nothing except a slightly dissociated feeling.

Alix stood somewhere nearby to his left. He guessed she was standing in front of the elevator doors, and he took a step forward, reaching out blindly, but there was nobody there. He stopped short and flailed his arms for a second to keep his balance. Taking another step away from the safety of the wall, he put his arms out on either side of him, and stretched, but he couldn't find her.

Quickly, Igor—the monster has escaped!

Suddenly the elevator doors opened, and the whole scene was lit up with fluorescent light. Alix was standing a few yards away, picking intently at her black-painted nails.

They stepped into the elevator together, and she took out a tube key on a leather thong that was hanging around her neck. She fitted it into a round keyhole on the control panel, turned it, and hit the button for the top floor.

The elevator took them down, down, far below the devastation on the surface, down through endless strata of soil and rock. He felt his ears pop from the pressure change. The air smelled of cordite.

A diagram on the monitor showed them approaching the lower limits of the terrestrial lithosphere, and a warning alarm began to sound. Suddenly she was in his arms, pressing her soft, slender form up against him.

“Together, we will start the human race anew,” she whispered in his ear. “Tonight—”

It was an old-fashioned freight elevator, with metal bars instead of walls. The floors they passed on their way up were marked with messily hand-painted numbers, as if someone had done them from the elevator while it was still moving.

“Quite the gilded little cage you have here,” Hollis said.

“Wait till you see the apartment,” she said wryly. “The buildup is better than the payoff.”

When they reached the top, Alix hauled the heavy door to one side with a metallic crash. It was a short, dirty white hallway with a single door at the far end. The door had a whole column of locks and latches on it, extending above and below the door handle, and she went down them in order, undoing each one with a different key.

“I wanted to put in some kind of a pass-card system,” she whispered. “The landlord wasn't into it.”

The door was like the door of a bank vault, and it swung open on big, reinforced metal hinges. On the other side was a long, narrow room, startlingly tall, like the nave of a miniature cathedral. A faint trace of muted, sepia-colored light came from a heavily shaded floor lamp in a corner. The floor and the walls were covered with layers of oriental rugs. Alix went ahead of him, moving quickly and silently through the room to a door in the far wall. She looked back at Hollis and put a finger up to her lips, pointing at an overstuffed couch with her other hand: a woman was sleeping there, curled up under a heap of blankets, her long brown hair falling over her face.

They slipped past her and through a kitchen, into another bedroom. Its brick walls were covered with hundreds of wooden cubbyholes, mostly full of books—the rest of the brick was plastered with photographs and posters. A giant-sized portrait of Tintin and Snowy in bright primary colors hung suspended over the bed, like a banner at a political rally. The ceiling gave way to a skylight, and someone had managed to hang a couple of strings of white Christmas lights from it like stars.

There were two small square windows that looked like they didn't open. Hollis started walking over to the nearer one, but an artsy black-and-white photograph caught his attention: it was a contact print of a woman sitting very straight and upright on what looked like a leather psychoanalyst's couch. She was naked from the waist up, and she was cupping one of her smallish breasts in one hand. The other breast was bare. Hollis bent down to look at it. The woman's hair fell over her face; he couldn't decide whether or not it was Alix.

The door closed behind him. She came in from the kitchen.

“Do you want something to drink?” she said. “Or should I say, something more to drink? I think I have some Scotch.”

“Thanks. That would be nice.”

She took a bottle and two shot glasses down from one of the cubbyholes.

“This place used to be a factory. They made bomb casings here in World War One. That's what these little compartments are for. They stored the bombs in them.”

“Handy.”

She passed Hollis a glass with a generous double shot in it, and they drank together. Then she sank down into an overstuffed armchair, which rocked backwards on springs under her weight.

“In a way, I can't believe you let me in here,” Hollis said, watching her.

She shrugged. “If one of us is a criminal mastermind here, it's probably me. You don't much strike me as the evildoer type. I see evildoers as more the self-starter type of person. Anyway, where's your spandex costume?”

“Maybe you caught me on dress-down day.”

Don't quit your day job.

She took another sip of the Scotch.

“Do you go to Harvard?” she said.

Hollis nodded. “I used to.”

“What did you major in?”

“Urban Studies.”

She grimaced. “What the hell is that?”

“I forget exactly,” he said. “I think there was a large filmic component.”

Hollis glanced out one of the windows. Through the thick plastic he could see down into a lot behind the warehouse, partitioned off by a chain-link fence. A massive explosion of green weeds had survived the chill of fall. Then he turned away and sat down on the edge of the bed, and a ginger-and-white cat zipped out from under it, its legs twinkling.

A witch and her familiar.

“That's a mighty big rig you're driving,” Hollis said, and he nodded at her computer, which was set up on its own on a long table against one wall. It had a massive megapixel monitor the size of an air conditioner. A standard rainbow-colored screen saver was running. Cables from half a dozen peripherals ran out from behind it onto the floor, all twining together down into one overgrown power strip.

“If you're going to steal something, steal that,” she said. “It's worth all the rest of this stuff combined.”

“Is that what you do for a living? You write code?”

“Not exactly. But it pays for some extras.”

“Like what?”

“Like trips and stuff. And this place. Drugs.”

Hollis laughed. “Drugs? Do you have some?”

Her eyes narrowed a little.

“Maybe when we know each other a little better,” she said.

“So I don't strike you as a criminal?” He took another slug of his whiskey. “What do I strike you as?”

Instead of answering right away, Alix got up, closed the door, and went over to the bed. She lay back on the pillows, at the other end from him.

“You strike me,” she said, “as a hick who stayed out too late.”

“Ouch.” He made a face.

“The truth hurts.”

He finished the Scotch and set the empty glass on the floor.

“Tell me something.” He slid up the bed and lay down next to her. “Is that you, in that picture over there?”

“Which one?”

“That black-and-white one,” he said. “Next to the window.”

She looked at it for a second, then at him, and then instead of answering she leaned down and kissed him on the lips, with her broad, dark mouth.

“What does it matter?” she said, after another second.

“It matters to me,” Hollis said.

“Why?” She drew back a millimeter. “Do you think she's pretty?”

“I just like to know,” he said.

Her nose was still cold from their walk home. She kissed him hard, without opening her mouth, and Hollis brought his hand up to her waist. He was surprised when he felt how thin her blouse was: it was just a silk slip.

When they broke apart again he whispered: “You must have been cold in just this.”

She rolled over on top of him, and they kissed again, longer this time, and this time her lips were open. He put his hand up and covered her breast with his hand, and she caught her breath softly. She was very flat-chested, and she wasn't wearing a bra. He could feel her nipple against his palm.

It was surprisingly warm and quiet in the apartment. Alix's bed was a real bed, and the mattress seemed unbelievably soft and giving after his hard futon at home. He put his other hand up under her slip and let it wander up her back. She was very slender. She pushed his coat down off his shoulders, and he let go of her to wriggle his arms out of it. He could already feel lipstick getting all over his face.

The cat mewed at the door, trying to get back inside.

*   *   *

A long time went by. He noticed a clock ticking somewhere not far away. It took him a minute before he found it.

“Oh, God,” he said suddenly. “It's after three.”

“So what?” she whispered.

“I have to be somewhere.” He sighed and sank back. “Soon. At four.”

The clock was over the bed. It was made in the shape of a black-and-white cat, with eyes that moved back and forth to mark the seconds. The pendulum was its tail.

He sighed again and closed his eyes. The soft pillows under his head made him want to fall asleep, and he grayed out for a few seconds.