The Faculty Club: A Novel (27 page)

She put a hand on both sides and leaned in. Her head disappeared.

"Be careful."

She ignored me.

"I think there's a current."

She was right: when I looked closely, the water was moving toward the far wall.

To my right was a giant mirror in a gold frame. Below it, a glass bowl sat on a table, filled with small planks of wood.

"Very
cute,
" Miles said.

He was suddenly next to me, with that self-satisfied look on his face. He leaned forward, resting his hands on a wooden chair.

"What?"

"The moon above. The water below. It's the classic triad. They're practically shouting it at us."

"Huh?"

Miles shook his head patiently.

"The moon. Water. What is the one thing that symbolizes
both
in nearly every culture?"

Suddenly, Miles grabbed the chair and shouted with glee: "
MIRRORS!
"

He swung the chair with all his force into the colossal mirror on the wall.

There was a tremendous explosion. Glass flew everywhere.

"A-HA!" Miles shouted victoriously.

He was holding the remains of the chair in midair.

Behind the mirror, there was a plain wall.

The last pieces fell with a jangle.

"Oh," Miles said. He looked at us. "Oops."

Sarah and I exchanged glances.

"Oops?"

"Oops."

"You just killed the mirror."

"I said oops."

Sarah scrunched her face into a perfect Miles impression.
"It's the classic triad,"
she lectured, pretending to push a pair of glasses up the bridge of her nose.

"Piss off," Miles said.

Sarah and I looked at each other and burst out laughing.

"It
would've
been cool," Miles mumbled. His face was turning bright red. "Come on--if there was a tunnel or something behind the mirror? That would have been awesome. What the hell do you know anyway . . . think you're some kind of genius, just 'cause you played with dolls in the other room . . ."

He stomped off to the far corner of the room and plopped in a chair, sulking.

We nearly doubled over, laughing.

Finally, I wiped my eyes and walked the room.

On the bookshelf, I found a model ship, the kind you'd see inside a glass bottle, but larger.

"Hey Miles," I said. "Mind if I look at this, or did you want to smash it first?"

"Screw you."

I took the ship off its base and turned it over.

"Weird."

On both sides, several planks were missing, like the smile of a very bad boxer.

I grinned.

I took the boat to the table under the broken mirror. I grabbed a plank of wood from the glass bowl and held it up to the boat. It was a perfect fit.

Sarah clapped.

Every plank snapped into place, not one to spare. The boat looked whole again, except that the old ship was made of pale balsa wood; the new pieces were cherry brown. But the problem was cosmetic--the boat felt perfect, balanced and new.

"Cool."

"I want to put it in the water," Sarah said.

"Well
obviously,
" Miles mumbled from his corner. He still wasn't making eye contact.

"Let's do it," I said.

"You would," Miles muttered.

"Could you grow up, please?" Sarah said. "If you know something, say it."

"It's the Ship of Theseus, clearly," Miles said.

"The ship of what?"

"Theseus. It's a paradox. An ancient puzzle."

"Oh for God's sake. Enlighten us."

"The Ship of Theseus was getting worn out, right? But they kept it going by replacing planks. Take an old plank out, put a new one in. So the question is, when does it stop being the Ship of Theseus?"

"I don't get it."

"If you replace one plank, is it still the Ship of Theseus?"

"Of course."

"What if you replace half the planks? Is it still the Ship of Theseus?"

"Yes."

"What if you replace all the planks?"

"Sure."

"Okay, now say someone picks up all the discarded planks and builds a second boat. Which one is the Ship of Theseus?"

Sarah and I answered at the same time.

"The old one," I said.

"The new one," she said.

"Exactly." Miles rubbed his hands together. "It's not just about some boat. It's about what it means to
be
something." He pointed at the smashed wood on the floor. "Is that still a chair? Is that still a mirror? Are you the same person you were a year ago? Is this boat the same one you found on that shelf?"

I threw my hands up.

"Great. Typical philosophy. We could debate all night, and we'd still have no idea what to do."

"I have an idea," Miles said. "Take those damn planks out and drop it in the water."

"Are you crazy?" Sarah snapped.

"It makes perfect sense," Miles answered. "Think about the V and D. What they're doing. They don't want the ship to change. They want the same old ship to keep sailing, forever and ever. They don't want to turn the voyage over to a new crew, a new ship, new planks. You put those pieces in, the philosophy's all wrong."

"But the
physics
is right. My boat won't sink. Yours will."

"Trust me."

"This from the guy who smashed the mirror."

"I'm telling you."

"We get one chance," I said. "It's twenty feet down."

"You're right," Miles said. He sighed. "Let me just see one thing."

He took the boat from my hands. He pulled out the brown slats of wood.

"Hmm . . ." he said, thinking hard, or rather pretending to.
Before I could say anything, he took a massive step and dropped the boat right into the split.

"YOU BASTARD!"

We ran to the edge. The boat went down with a splash then sank underwater.

"You fucking arrogant prick," Sarah shouted. "How dare you? People's lives are at stake. Maybe you don't care about them, but don't you care about yourself?"

"I have self-esteem issues," Miles said.

"Shut up and look!" I shouted.

The boat had hit the water and submerged from the force, but now it popped back up and rocked its way in the slow current toward the far end.

"I'll be damned," Miles said.

I started to get excited, but then I saw the bubbles escaping the boat. I could imagine the water flooding into the hull.

"Oh shit."

The boat started to sink.

"NO."

It was still moving, slower than we needed. Halfway down the stream, it was halfway submerged.

"Shit," I said. "Shit, shit, shit. Come
on.
"

"Go . . . go . . . go . . ." Sarah called.

"Oh no," Miles said.

He was looking at the far end of the stream.

"What?" I slid toward the end with him. "What
is
that?"

There was a tunnel at the end of the stream, tall enough for the boat to pass through, sails and all. But what Miles saw was spanning the length of that entrance: a wire, pulled tight across the passage, near the top of the opening.

A wonderful phrase from my childhood adventure books suddenly came to mind:

Booby trap.

"Miles," I said, "what do you think happens if our sail hits that string?"

He shrugged. All the smugness was gone. He met my eyes and made a motion with his hands that said:
ka-boom.

Sarah was a couple of feet away, her eyes locked on the boat, chanting: "Float . . . float . . . float . . ."

"Sarah."

I showed her the wire.

Her eyes went wide.

She looked back at our boat and chanted: "Sink . . . sink . . . sink . . ."

I joined her.

What else could we do--run out the way we came in?

Miles was already there. He tried the knob and cursed.

The boat was inches from the end. It was almost three-quarters underwater, still drifting in the current, the sails still high enough to hook the filament. The bubbles were pouring out the sides.

"Sink . . . sink . . .
sink . . . SINK . . .
"

The ship hit the end, sputtering air, drowning, and by a fraction of an inch the sail cleared the wire.

The boat disappeared into the shadows of the passage.

This triggered a rumbling that began far below and worked its way up to us. It seemed to be inside the wall. There was a clicking sound, and the bar slid across the massive door, back into its socket. Moments later, a panel clicked open in the bookshelf, and the boat was deposited back in its spot.

Miles marched to the door and gave it a heavy push. It swung open.

He shot us a victory smirk and strode through.

I looked at Sarah and shook my head.

"You know, he's right half the time. The problem is, we don't know which half."

She took my hand and smiled wearily.

"Let's just get through this, okay? Then we can go somewhere, get a nice little house, have kids, grow old. What do you say?"

"Where would we go?"

"I don't know. How about Jamaica?"

"What do you think of Texas?"

"Texas?" She gave a
why not
? shrug. "I've never been to Texas."

She kept holding my hand, and we walked under the arch.

We found ourselves in a room that was somehow vast
and
claustrophobic.

Vast, because the far wall--and the only other door--stretched away from us like a hallway in a bad dream. The kind that keeps extending the more you run.

Claustrophobic, because the side walls and low ceiling loomed in on us. Every few feet I saw narrow slots that ran from the floor up the side walls and across the ceiling. There were elegant sconces with candles on the walls. Miles pulled out his Zippo and lit a few.

To my left, I noticed a bizarre mosaic on the wall, made out of tiny slick tiles. It traced the form of a demon, a grotesque creature with massive lips and hands, and an odd phallus that hung limp.

Miles walked up next to me.

"Ugly little fucker," he said.

Sarah was across from us, examining a mural on the opposite wall. This one resembled a subway map but with no stops labeled. She studied the branching paths.

I put my hand on the demon and let my fingers trace over the tiles.

"What is it?" I asked him.

"It's a totem of some kind. A god from some ancient religion."

"Which one? What does it mean?"

Miles squinted his eyes.

"South American, maybe. Or Pacific Islander . . . Looks like one of those Easter Island heads."

"You guys have no idea what you're talking about," a voice said from behind us. It was Sarah. She was laughing.

She started walking toward us, and her foot came down on a floorboard that sank inward with a series of sickening clicks, like an old man cracking his knuckles. Sarah's head jerked up at us. Her eyes were wide.

"What did I just do?" she asked.

Before we could guess, there was a grinding noise from within the walls. My fingers were still on the tiles. I felt a vibration pass in a wave under my hand. There was a tremendous noise, like a machine rumbling to life, and then there was a
release
--the noise a carnival ride makes after it's raised you up ten stories and the claws suddenly spring open.

We heard a screaming metallic cry. It started slow and then accelerated, rising in pitch. Then there was a flash of mirror and the blade--as tall and wide as a man--came tearing out of the slot with blinding speed. It arced down, sliced a hair above the floor in the center of the room, then disappeared into the slot on the far wall. The screaming slowed, then stopped.

Then it built up again, and a moment later the blade tore back across the room, straining its cable like the pendulum of an asylum clock.

"Oh, shit," Sarah said.

The blade swung back and forth at the far end of the room, in front of the lone door.

"It's okay," I said. "It's okay. It's not that fast. We can time it."

"Time it wrong, and you're salami," Miles offered.

Every pass of the blade made a palpable
whomp,
a pulse of wind that reached us. I counted from the time it disappeared into the
slot until it reappeared and ripped across our path. At least three seconds. No problem.