Box Nine (22 page)

“Excuse?” Woo asks, but Lenore ignores him.

“We've got to make a couple phone calls,” she says, “and pick up a thermos of black coffee.”

Chapter Eighteen

I
've done everything you've ever asked … This
can't
be necessary. I've done everything— … No. I'm
begging
you— … No. Then it's best left to me.”

Cortez brings the cordless phone down from his mouth to his chest and holds it there for a moment, his eyes closed, his hands trembling. Then he moves the phone away from his body, looks down into the small cradle of illuminated rubber buttons. He pushes on the Open Speaker switch and sets the phone gently down on the fireplace mantel, mouth-grid faced up toward the library ceiling.

He walks over to the black steamer trunk, the only thing left resembling furniture in the whole room. He grabs a leather handle and eases the trunk down until its rests horizontally on the floor. Then he drags it to the center of the room.

There's a shave-and-a-haircut knock on the library's double doors. He takes a breath and yells, “Come in, Max.”

The door opens slowly and Max, looking smaller than usual in his green camouflage army clothes, enters with a single step, then stays put.

They stare at each other until Cortez says, “Is it what you expected?”

“It's a little … empty.”

Cortez smiles. “I don't like to be crowded. You know that.”

“Yeah, but a chair. A table, maybe.”

“Creature comforts.”

“Yeah, well, ain't we creatures?”

Cortez laughs. “Right again, Max.”

“I never got what the big thing was with this room. Nobody could go in this one room.”

Cortez hand-motions him to come closer and says, “Well, Max, there always has to be one exception to any freedom. Like the apple in the garden.”

“You know, I only get about half of what you say.”

“I think you're doing better than Mingo and Jimmy.”

“Big challenge.”

Cortez nods, clears his throat, looks down to the floor.

“So why'd you want me up here now?” Max asks.

Cortez lets out a heavy sigh. He sinks down to sit on the steamer trunk as if it were a bench and he slaps the top of the trunk to indicate that Max should do the same.

“I've been giving some thought to your future, Max.”

“My future?”

“I've been considering the best avenues for you.”

“Avenues, yeah.”

“I'm very upset with myself, Max. I honestly think I've been quite lax in regard to your education.”

“You mean like school?”

“I mean, like, the development of your mind, the forging of a sturdy personal aesthetic.”

“Aesth—”

“We can't let our origins limit us, Max. We can't become content with our situations. That leads to decay. Try to remember this always.”

“Was there some errand you needed run? Something from the store?”

“You've done very well around the hotel over the past few years, Max. You performed your duties, done all that was asked of you.”

“I don't do all that much.”

“And in return, I've slighted you. But you must know it was never an intentional slight. A man gets involved in business, Max. In the planning, the telescoping, the contingencies. The day-to-day pressures mount. A man begins to forsake the truly important goals. It happens to most men, I think. I had hoped to hold myself to a higher standard.”

“You know, I think Mingo could really use a hand down in the kitchen …”

“Here you are now, already in the midst of adolescence. There's so much I should have showed you already. I'm sure I'd be appalled with myself if I knew the depth of your ignorance.”

“Jees, don't be so hard on yourself, Mr. C—”

“Just now, for instance, my reference to the Eden story. Right over your head. A primal metaphor like that. But of course, how could you have known it? Spontaneous generation in the brain? It has to be passed down. The oral tradition, Max.”

“Oral tradition, sure.”

“There are so many stories I could have told you by now.”

Cortez rises off the trunk, but holds out a hand to indicate that Max should stay seated.

“So many nights, up in my balcony at Club 62 with my bullhorn and spotlight. And I could have been with you, Max, lights out, seated in a rocker next to your bed, yes? I could have told you stories until you fell off to sleep.”

“I was with you in the balcony a lot, boss—”

“And the funny thing is, it would have proved even better training, I think. I truly believe that.” Cortez starts to walk a small circle around the steamer. “Better even than observing my actions firsthand. We could have sculpted the imagination. Taught you to think in terms of legend and myth. Larger than life. Wouldn't you have liked that, Max?”

Max hesitates, then mumbles, “Yeah, I guess,” and Cortez reaches from behind him, places his hand on the boy's forehead, and pushes him slowly down until he's reclined on top of the trunk.

“It could have been just like this, Max. You're not quite ready for sleep. I'm tired from an endless day, but regenerating, finding a second wind in what's to come. Close your eyes, Max.”

Max looks up at Cortez, visibly uncomfortable, but not knowing what to do. He closes his eyes. His legs hang over the end of the trunk. Cortez continues his circle.

“I could have transferred all the classics to you, Max. Chronicles of war. Stories of gods and monsters and long ocean journeys. We could have learned together. Just a voice in a dark room. A father's voice. Comforting. Protecting. Full of hidden knowledge and ancient stories. Homer, Max. Hesiod. Terence. Virgil. Ovid. All the names, Max. And the Bible. All the stories. We could've worked our way through. From ‘In the beginning' to the last ‘Amen' of Revelation.”

Cortez talks and walks another circle, comes to rest at Max's head. The boy's eyelids are fluttering. He wants to open the eyes, but he doesn't dare. Cortez squats down, puts a hand on Max's forehead, lowers his voice.

“I could've taken you from the six days of creation to the visions of John. But there's a price for everything, son. And some opportunities only come our way once. A single chance.”

Cortez reaches inside his jacket and pulls from an inner breast pocket a long, pearl-handled dagger. An antique. Handmade. A gift from people whose faces he's never seen. He grabs the handle tight in his hand, raises it above his head, squeezes it as he leans down and kisses Max on the forehead.

The boy's eyes come open, shocked and wide. They stare at each other for an aching, impossible second.

And then Cortez brings the dagger down. Plunges it into the steamer trunk all the way down to the handle. He pushes Max up to a standing position and yells, “Get out!”

The boy runs, stumbling, out of the library. Cortez stands up and runs to the fireplace, grabs the phone from the mantel, holds it up to his mouth, and yells into the receiver, “Two words. Fuck you,” then heaves the phone like a speedball, the length of the room, until it smashes against a wall in an explosion of black plastic and colored wires.

He takes the dagger from his pocket and places it on the mantel, then puts a hand on either side of it to steady himself. He takes a few deep breaths, swallows, and says aloud, “I'm a dead man.”

Chapter Nineteen

L
enore would give almost anything to know what Woo is dreaming about. She wishes there were some process she could tap, some gift of science that would allow her to bring in a Sony Trinitron, strap a few cables and electrodes from TV to forehead in the manner of every cheaply made 1950s science-fiction movie she's ever stumbled upon at 4
A.M.,
sitting cross-legged in her bed, zapping through the cable channels with the remote control and pumping a ten-pounder with her free hand, her Magnum in her lap.

If she could make the connection, adjust the volume, and hone the contrast, what would she see among the static and sparks of Woo's synapse pictures? The stale air and dull faces of a college classroom as Woo's hand draws root words and clever, pointy symbols on a slate blackboard? The milk-white skin of the latest eighteen-year-old co-ed he's seduced on the couch of his linguistics office? Or just maybe her own face, spitting smug insults his way as his hand slides inside her silk chemise and cradles her breast and his fingers run over a rapidly hardening nipple?

Maybe it's nothing like that. He's breathing easily, not making any noise. Maybe it's some simple pastoral dream from his grand-father's narrated past. Something about rice paddies or the slow lapping sound of water against the sides of a sturdy junk bobbing near a shore, riding out the mild, endless waves of the family village. Maybe she should wake him suddenly and ask him, demand that he spit out his imagery before it fades. Interrogate him for every detail he can save from the deteriorating land of REM sleep.

Lenore's own dreams were horrible and she's grateful to be awake. The first thing she did after opening her eyes and getting a bearing on her surroundings was to pull a hit of crank from her pocket and pop it. There's no water available, so she had to swallow it dry. It went down hard and her throat still aches.

But she's happy to be awake and even this filthy basement is better than what she went through in the nightmare: She was the sole passenger on this endless subway ride. The subway car was this broken-down bullet, windowless, graffiti-covered, floors filled, for some reason, with old, yellowed, crumpled-up newspapers. The graffiti was in either code or some new inner-city slang or an obscure foreign language, but there were crudely drawn illustrations next to it that gave her an idea of its meaning. Like some subterranean Rosetta stone. Both the forward and rear doors were jammed shut. Every now and then the lights would go out and she'd sit in the darkness for what seemed like an hour. The car seemed to be gradually but consistently picking up speed. Her feet vibrated on the floor and her hands, gripping the edge of her seat, began to shake. There was an awful and incessant electric-sounding hum in her ear. At one point she panicked and ripped open her coat to look for her gun, but her holster was empty. Cold air began to fill the car. Every now and then she moved to the front and back doors and yelled, first calling out full sentences like
Is anyone down there?
or
Can anyone stop this thing?
Then she shortened to calls for
Help
, and finally, just before giving up, she made guttural, animal noises, howls and barks. She collapsed back onto the cream-colored molded plastic bench and began to imagine the cinematic possibility that some bomb had fallen and decimated the city. That the radiation had seeped into the tunnels and killed the driver, the only other person in the subway, in this terrible strangulating manner. She fell sideways on the bench, curled into a fetal hunch, and wondered which would be worse—to be choked out in the near future by the radiation making its way toward her, car by car, or to be immune to the radiation and live, trapped on this perpetually moving vehicle, circle the city over and over, until dehydration alone turned her car into a mobile grave. She could probably have hurled herself out of one of the shattered windows and under the wheels, but suicide was out of the question for more than one reason. As she crowded in further on her own body, the hum in her ears increased until it became painful. She woke from the dream with her hands at the sides of her head.

She and Woo are in the basement of the Sapir Street Postal Station. Miskewitz, through Mayor Welby, had the postmaster let them in during the night so they could get in position and set up operations before any of the mail carriers, or even the branch supervisor, knew of police presence below their feet.

They brought with them two sleeping bags, a bag of convenience store food—potato chips, candy bars, packaged donuts—a double thermos of coffee, and all the electronics needed to listen to and tape any phone calls coming into or leaving the Bach Room. At 2
A.M.,
Miskewitz had a lineman setting the tap on the pole behind the bar. Lenore and Woo moved into the basement just before four.

Now Lenore is kicking herself for not bringing something to read. Woo brought a small paperback, without any cover illustrations, titled
Aztec Tongue
in big white block letters. She'd like to ask him if it's fiction or some difficult textbook but she knows she won't. She hasn't given any thought to the question of why she allowed this dorkwhite, whom she doesn't even like, to unbutton her blouse, control the situation. The fact that she didn't set an initial, unforgettable example—inflict some physical punishment, draw a little nose blood—bothers her tremendously. Had it been Zarelli, his index finger would be in a splint right now and he'd be explaining to the wife and the lieutenant how he slammed his desk drawer on it.

She's set things up in a tiny alcove at the back of the basement, away from the sidewalk-level windows covered with black wire grilles. There's a small semi-room, set off from the rest of the cellar by two brick partitions, housing the old furnace, the water main, and the electrical board that's updated with a box of circuit breakers. Lenore and Woo pulled an abandoned worktable into the alcove, dusted it off, and placed on it the receiver and tape machine.

Though the alcove is much roomier than the inside of the Barracuda, Lenore would much rather be in her car. She feels slightly claustrophobic in the cellar and she hates the thought of breathing in years of dust and soot. The idea of rodents doesn't thrill her, but it's below the cooped-up feeling on the list of things that annoy her. Ike, she thinks, would probably love it here, secluded, forgotten, dim, an extreme version of his side of the duplex. Ike dislikes bright lights, and, she suspects, has some latent agoraphobia brewing in his psyche. They're exact opposites in this regard and she wonders if anyone has done a study of this in twins.
We're dizygotic
, she thinks,
two different eggs
, and then she envisions herself and Ike as small grey rectangular magnets. Turned one way, they repel away from one another. Ends reversed, they slide together helplessly and mesh. She considers the fact that some days she dwells for hours on Ike's lack of a girlfriend and considers women that she could introduce him to. Other days, she knows, his singleness pleases her and she wants him to stay forever alone, on the opposite side of her walls.