Tired and disoriented, once through the door of the apartment I turned to the hatrack to say hello. I was still remembering it had been broken in Sophie’s struggle with the pimp when she strode down the hall to hug wrap her arms around me. Despite Cheryl’s voice telling me not to be an ass, I felt myself harden at her touch, unwilling or unable to let go of my anger.
When my arms didn’t leave my side, she let go. I barely acknowledged her to push past, headed to the bedroom. I only said, “If anyone asks, I left in the car with a Russian,” followed by the same brief description I had given Max, but with no name. “Just don’t go to mentioning the pimp,” I added, as if Sophie actually needed instructions to not volunteer information about a murder she had committed then we covered up. I collapsed into the bed, kicking up a cloud of noise and dust. I covered my eyes with my forearm, blocking out the lights and so I didn’t have to look at Sophie or any mirrors. I wasn’t sure when the sun was coming up and I just wanted to sleep.
I felt Sophie hover near the bedroom threshold, floating on her own cloud of guilt and questions. If she wanted to say something, she didn’t. In a past life I had been married long enough to recognize the inhalation of breath that recaptures a spoken word or the hesitant step forward that turns into a retreat. Whatever barriers those were meant to overcome, they never did.
I wasn’t actually angry at Sophie – there was one less asshole in the world and his corpse was now burning with two other assholes. As I tried to remain still and control the poison of my emotions, I realized I shouldn’t have come home.
The fatigue I was trying to surrender to wasn’t enough to overcome the anger and fear I had ridden the entire night. Instead of laying on the bed I would have been better off walking the streets of Old Town and their relative safety until I had released enough of my pollution that I wouldn’t have brought it all home to Sophie. So why didn’t I do that?
Opening my eyes I could see Sophie sitting on the couch in the other room, inches from where we had maneuvered a corpse only hours before. When she made eye contact over the paperback she was reading, I realized I hadn’t gone stalking the streets because I wanted, for at least a few hours, to feel safe. And here, with her, I did.
That internal admission must have changed something in me because Sophie got up and walked into the bedroom and lay down beside me. This time, when I felt her arm around me, I closed my eyes and drifted off.
It didn’t last. There were too many things to worry about. A few hours later my eyes snapped open as my brain reminded me of all of them. First and foremost was that I needed to meet Mitnick. I doubted one of his men going missing for a few days would stir up much suspicion, but that logic didn’t make the situation feel less dire. I only had two hours till noon.
I got up and walked the apartment floor like a drill sergeant conducting an inspection. The splinters of the coffee table were gone, any fibers of the carpet had been swept up, and the floor underneath it was freshly scrubbed. In the corner near the bedroom, Sophie’s and Jardin’s clothes from yesterday were in a trash bag. Sophie had been busy.
As I stuffed my own clothes into the bag, an aroma of acrid sweat and heavy perfume rolled in an odor of something like chlorine. For whatever reason, it made me wonder what it would be like if we were normal people who could have just called the police and claimed self-defense in regard to the greedy and stupid man who had come for Sophie.
That would have been nice. But sweeping him into the dustbin of history took less time and produced less notice than bringing in law enforcement. The nebulous nature of my own freedom and residency in France also wasn’t something I was looking to have closely examined.
I was disappointed to add the peacoat in the bag, but I did anyway.
Sophie, still lying on the bed, was watching me roust about the apartment. When I noticed, I confirmed her intentions with the bag by holding it up and asking, “Bruciatura?”
She yawned around a nod and said, “Si.”
I dropped the bag and strode to the bed, kneeling by it. I remembered that I had never told her so I took her hands in mine and said, “I have to go meet Mitnick.”
Sophie was always able to transition from asleep to awake with a speed that I envied and she did it now. “Perché?”
“When I called about the car, he said he wanted to meet. Today.”
“Dove?” she asked. “Where?”
“At the cathedral.”
Sophie’s eyes broke from mine long enough to dart to the freshly cleaned floor of the living room, then to the door. When they came back they didn’t contain any of the joy that I thought of as inseparable from her. “What if you do not return?”
The question made me consider bringing her with me. But if Mitnick had an entourage with him, which he almost certainly would, someone might recognize her from the party. More importantly, it might give Mitnick himself a chance to lay eyes on her and I didn’t want that. There was a chance he might not yet know that Sophie and I were together and I wanted to keep it that way.
I brushed the hair out of her green eyes and thought about telling her to go to Atwell or leave the country, but I knew she wouldn’t do any of that. So I just said, “Then you do what you gotta do.”
A small frown crinkled a corner of her mouth. “Stupidi Americani.”
For some reason this made me feel better, light enough that I was able to come up from kneeling easily, giving her my own smile as I did. “Yeah,” I agreed.
Sticky eyes blinking open, Marta felt the uncanny familiarity of waking in a strange place settle on her. Normally, she would have scrambled to find her phone, her purse, her keys. If she hadn’t passed out in her clothes, she’d search for those as well, usually while trying to be stealthy enough not to wake the person she had found herself next to in whatever had passed for a bed.
Marta did not have that problem now. She had been to enough rehab centers that the manicured lawn, pristine white buildings, and preternaturally calm staff told her she was in a particularly rich cousin to that kind of healthcare facility. The shaking in her hands and her sensitivity to light told her she was suffering the after-effects of what had probably been a wonderfully fun combination of alcohol and god knows what else.
Whatever it had been, though, was long past and overshadowed by the dim recollection of emergency services arriving. There were some dim memory of a pitstop at a standard hospital, shadows of loved ones, mumbles about legal consent, and now she was here, a place she didn’t know but was, at the same time, known territory. Sitting in the sun, she pulled the terrycloth robe tighter over her patient’s gown and adjusted the dark glasses she was wearing, grateful to whatever kind soul had left her with them.
“Hello!” The cry came from across the yard, both friendly and authoritative. Among the white-clad nurses crossing the lawn to their scheduled responsibilities stood a sharp-dressed middle-aged man walking straight to Marta. He had the look of an academic, complete with elbow-patched tweed blazer and beard, but he moved up the grassy hill with a hustle one might expect from a courier with an important message.
Marta waved to him, finding the strength to produce a crinkled smile. Not long ago she might have hated the man on sight, as as anyone might a captor, but she had come to recognize that these people, even the ones in charge, were only executing the will of others, earnest helpers at best, incompetents at worst. Abusing them didn’t serve any purpose. Marta moved to rise from the lawn chair she had awakened on and found that she couldn’t, her legs too weak.
If the man noticed, he didn’t say anything, instead pulling up a lawn chair to sit next to Marta. He smiled warmly and didn’t offer any of the usual bromides she was accustom to, no “I hope you’re doing well,” or “I trust you’re comfortable.” Instead he looked directly at her with wide-set brown eyes and said, “Welcome to Difficult House.”
Marta cocked her head, certain she had misheard him. “Excuse me?”
“It’s what we call our facility – the Difficult House.” He looked around the grounds as he continued, “It’s been a long time since the campus was truly only one house, but we kept the name.”
Marta scanned the open yard again, suddenly finding the manicured lawn and white of the buildings imbued with foreboding, as if the name spoke of some hidden, gothic nature. Never one for impulse control, Marta translated this into, “Why? Is your team big fans of electro-shock therapy?”
“No, no! Of course not.” He laughed, ending it abruptly with, “Unless that’s something you you want to try.”
“Why would I want to try being electrocuted?”
“Under controlled circumstances it’s been shown to have positive effects on individuals with long-term and unshakeable depression.” He brought his eyes into a sharp focus onto Marta. “But that’s not your problem, is it?”
The presumption in the question, that this stranger somehow knew her, irked Marta. “And who are you?”
“Dr. Monroe. But that’s not important right now. What is important, is that you understand why you’re here.”
Marta felt an old, familiar bitterness well up, a feeling she had known since she was 14 and the maid had caught her with a bottle of schnapps and everything had spun out of control. “Oh, I understand why I’m here. You’ll keep me under wraps for a few weeks until I get clean, then we all pretend everything’s OK, you charge my grandmother a small fortune, and then let me go.”
Monroe nodded his head, lips pursed and eyes closed for a moment to communicate patient understanding. “I know that you’ve been through rehabilitation before. That must make it hard to trust.”
Marta laughed out loud at this, surprising even herself with its volume. “Then let me out of here and give me a ride downtown.”
“Well, no. You will be constantly observed here.”
“Then I’m a prisoner.”
“Only in the fact that you are the only person who will be able to secure your release.”
“Then I’m telling you to let me go.”
“Not right now.”
“Why not?”
“Because you are a difficult person.” The man paused as if he might put a comforting hand on Marta, but he had the good sense not to do that. “Marta, you’ve been been given everything one can be given to be happy. You have two loving parents, you were raised in comfort, had every opportunity for education or athleticism. Besides the damage you’ve done to yourself, you’re perfectly healthy. You have everything that a person could reasonably hope for.” He paused to let that sink in. “But here you are, in a facility that you never would have made it to if someone hadn’t dropped you off in an emergency room.”
“Then why didn’t they just let me die?” Marta found the edge she wanted to put into sentence wasn’t there, just a deep exhaustion.
“Your death would have caused any number of people a tremendous amount of pain.”
Marta tried to bury herself in the warm white robe. “They’d get over it. Everybody does.” The same tears she always cursed came at the thought of her grandfather, Desiree, the others, so many, close to her and gone now, and everyone else moving about their lives as if they had never existed.
She found the strength to look at the doctor. “You know this is as pointless as I do. Why bother?”
“Happiness is a thing that can exist, Marta. Even for you.”
Marta’s skepticism radiated out, even through the sunglasses. “Do you know how many rehab facilities I’ve been in?”
“Seven.”
“And what makes you think this will be different?”
“Because this one you won’t leave until you decide that you are happy.”
Marta tittered nervously, a habit she hated, but found herself frightened by the enormous implications of the statement. “And how are you going to make me happy?”
The doctor pulled back as if she had spoken in a foreign language. “No one here is going to make you happy. There’s certainly therapy, which I recommend daily, a neuro-pharmacist on staff to help with any imbalances, daily exercise classes of varying types, plus any type of academic class or skill acquisition you could hope for. Looking over your file, I suspect that might be the best place for you to start. See if there’s anything that grabs your interest.”
Marta smirked, “What if I want to learn how to be an escape artist?”
“I’m told that the library has a rather extensive collection of Houdini’s works. Or works about him. I’m not sure which.” He blinked again, concluding, “But that won’t help you.”
“I don’t see how staying here will.”
“That’s understandable. You’re fragile and in poor health. A few weeks of recovery and proper diet will go a long way. Beyond that, though, you’ll find the Difficult House isn’t just impossible to escape, it’s hard to leave.
“You can explore anything you want here, try new skills, meet new people, learn about ancient cultures, experiment with the latest technologies. You can put on plays or create podcasts, work in teams or spend your days in quiet, solitary contemplation. Other than the self-destructive behavior your historically inflicted on yourself, you can do whatever you’d like to try to discover what might make you happy.”
At those words, Marta felt an old hardness return to her chest, a stone that formed there whose weight was only matched by its coldness, a crushing iciness that wouldn’t allow her up from the chair even if her legs worked.
As this familiar feeling settled on her, Marta could feel the steady gaze of the doctor, but unlike some many loved ones, strangers, and professional observers before him, the accompanying sting of judgment wasn’t there.
It was this that let Marta wipe a tear from her cheek and ask, “What if I can’t? What if I’m just not capable of it? Some people can’t walk. Maybe I can’t be happy.”
The doctor smiled again, but it wasn’t dismissive or filled with a pep-talk glee, but a calm that Marta envied. So she listened to him when he said, “Marta, part of the problem is how our society defines happiness. It tends to get packaged as some kind of deep, intense bliss that’s somehow permanent. A joy that isn’t real unless it’s always with you. But happiness is different for everyone. What’s happiness for you might be entirely unrecognizable for someone else.”
A shadow, as if from a great bird, passed over them. When the flicker of that was gone, Marta asked, “How will I know what happiness is?”
“I don’t know,” Monroe responded. “It is our hope that being here will help you figure that out for yourself.
Unsure if the Idiots would ever show, I waited anyway. To pass the time, I peeled strips off the label of the water bottle and counting the breaths out of my nose, trying to get my autonomic responses under control. It felt very odd to breathe a sigh of relief when I saw Max walk in with the Algerian and Fatty in tow. They didn’t spot me, but made their way to the same booth they had inhabited the night before, settling into its cage as they surveyed the thin crowd.
I watched them for awhile before it occurred to me that they were probably here in, what passed for them, a professional capacity. While they generally hung together, Fatty and Algerian floated outside of a booth’s cage while Max sat in it, like some low-rent godfather. They might be waiting for any number of people, or perhaps selling something themselves, so I decided to approach before the crowd decided to show up.
Despite being on the inside of the booth, Max saw me before his two comrades. He smiled, but I wouldn’t say he was happy. A barely restrained greed shone in his dark eyes and I felt myself breathe an internal sigh of relief. I could use that.
Before I got to them, Max mumbled to the other two and they parted, standing nearby in a semblance of the professional thuggery they had strode for walking into Simon’s cafe. I slid into the booth without waiting for an invitation, setting my bottle on the table. Unsure of how to start I only nodded. Like my feet, my tongue felt swollen with the evening’s violence and lies, so I decided to wait until the music picked up that it might cover our conversation.
In that interval I felt questions poke out of my brain and try to make their way to my mouth. Where was Lanzo? How was business? How was his night going, for Christ’s sake. This only made me wonder why I wanted to have a conversation with the Idiots at all. The answer, of course, was that I needed something from them. That realization made me want to pull a pin on a grenade and set it on the table, watch people scramble while I waited the eight seconds.
“You want a drink?” Max asked me in an unexpected show of hospitality. Still trapped in the cage of my mind I only gave him a minute shake of my head and small tilt of the water bottle.
Demonstrating that this was the extent of his own interest in small talk Max nodded at me, the hardly restrained avarice I had seen overtaking the caution in his demeanor. He asked, “Have you spoken to Sartre?”
I leaned forward, speaking into the booth, making sure my mouth couldn’t be seen by anyone standing outside of it. “That thing we talked about? With the girl?” Max chopped the air with his chin, urging me on. “It’s a no-go. Sartre won’t have it.”
Max nearly stood, despite the booth’s limitations, his chest puffing out and his face changing to the color of the upholstery like he was some weird lizard derivative. “Why not?”
“It would cause too much trouble.” I gave him the answer that I hoped Sartre would have provided, but his enmity of Mitnick was so great I wasn’t sure I believed that.
Max slapped the table with an open palm, then breathed vehemently, quick in and out bursts through his nose, then slowly lowered himself down again, sinking in his choleraic disappointment. He opened his mouth to reply, mounting some kind of counter-argument, as if I would have any influence over Sartre.
He got out a half a dozen words in garbled English and French before I decided I really didn’t want to hear whatever his protest was, cutting him off with what he wanted to hear. “But I think I can get him to change his mind.” Some of my thoughts escaped, drifting to the service station, not too far away, transforming itself into a pillar of black smoke.
Max grinned, the fire of his disappointment quickly transforming into the warm glow of a man who was certain he had bet on the right horse. “How?”
“There’s something going on, doesn’t matter what to you.” I started slowly, plotting out the future course of the lie along its border with the truth. “But if anyone asks, when I came in here tonight, I was with a Russian, big ears, gray hair, black jacket.” I made as if to scratch my neck just above the collar. “Star tattoo right here.” I felt my eyes dart away from Max as I tried to recall more physical details, but found in the tide of receding adrenaline that I couldn’t. So I added, “His name was Mikhail. We spoke to you.” I left the third-person plural open to interpretation, whether that meant us as a group or just me and Mikhail.
Max wiped his nose with the red stripe of his balaclava, the bags under his eyes puffing as he squinted at me. “Is that all?”
I shook my head, “No. The most important thing is – you told us nothing.” I emphasized the last three words, trying my best to nail Max to the back of the booth with personal gravity. “But someone will come and they will ask. They’ll ask hard.” It occurred to me it might be Sartre’s men doing the asking so I added, “Doesn’t matter who it is, you need to stick to that story.” I leaned back into the booth, concluding, “If you do, Sartre will know you can keep your cool.”
The incredible unlikelihood that Sartre would trust Max’s ability to keep a secret with such a simple test escaped Max, his greed at the opportunity this provided him overriding whatever good sense he might have had. I was impressed, though, when he asked, “Did you arrive together? Leave together?”
I think my smile was almost genuine at his attention to detail, complete with a sadistic edge. “We arrived together. Left together not much later.”
Max straightened up from the booth, scanning the Abattoir through the booth’s bars, perhaps taking stock of how many people might have seen me. When he came back down, he nodded. “I can do this.”
I returned the nod, but angling at Algerian and Fatty, pretending not to notice them listening in. “And them?”
Max grinned widely, a kind of tinpot pride swelling his cheeks. “Of course. Any secret we keep among us, we take to our graves.” I doubted that, but shook his hand as if we were blood brothers.
I made to get up, then scanned the booth absently. As if I had forgotten something, I asked, “Where’s Lanzo?”
Max’s eyes barely tilted towards the ceiling in a gesture that spoke volumes of some hidden frustration. Whatever that was, though, he didn’t speak to it, only saying, “Hungover.”
“You sure you can get him to do his part?” This was an honest question – after seeing the lengths that Lanzo had gone to be near Nika, convincing him into a kidnapping plot didn’t seem like something he’d willingly sign up for.
Max flashed his teeth in a show of bravado. “Of course. As you say, les gars avant les poulettes.”
I tried to force out a piratical grin that felt like it came out in sharp angles and barb wire. As I slid out of the booth I made sure the other two Idiots could hear me over the growing bass of the music, “I’ll talk to the Night Governor.” I could practically hear the self-congratulations bounce between the three of them as I walked away.
I left the Abattoir, happy to see that the dark of The Factory’s cavern was lit by the oscillating club lights. Not wanting to leave anymore trail than I had to, I left the club before finding another phone to call a cab. Fortunately for me, Alon answered on the first try and remembered where The Factory was with very little prompting.
My entire life I’d been able to sleep on anything that moved – planes, trains, automobiles – whatever. Moving through that night, though, I could only close my eyes in the back of the taxi. I felt the world rushing by in its unstoppable motion, me just its passenger.
Select the play button above for an audio reading.
Gladys walked a long ways up the rolling green hill before she realized she didn’t remember how she had gotten there. She had come far enough to see that it, along with six of its similar siblings, rounded each other to form a bowl, the bottom of which she was walking up from. This was fine, she decided, and sat down in the grass, happy to stare up at the blue sky and watch clouds roll by.
It did seem strange, she decided, that such a lovely place was devoid of people. Or perhaps it was lovely because it was devoid of people. She stretched out across the ground, content to allow that curiosity to drift away as well.
That lasted until she heard the first call, a sound like a hunting horn, a prolonged note that widened out at the end, as if flattening against the sky. The long, lonely blast pulled Gladys up from her prone position to look across the hills, searching for the source. It only took a moment. She saw below her, where she had just risen from, the lone gray figure.
Gladys pulled her legs under her as she saw the figure move toward her. Whatever it was didn’t look friendly. It’s face certainly wasn’t – it was dark and rough, as if it had been carved from bark, bent to resemble human features. Vertical lines had been cruelly dug out of the sinuous face. Those lines only bent to make room for the square mouth, which Gladys imagined splitting to reveal its many sharp teeth. Above this were it’s protruding, globular eyes, circles that bugged out to stare at Gladys from its alien countenance. Between the eyes was a crest that rose to the top of its head, to form something like a shark’s dorsal fin.
Perhaps worst of all, though, was the incongruity of the creature’s body. This appeared human with two arms and two legs, its slight frame draped with a striped and puckered suit that moved lightly in the wind. With the ghastly, bulbous head, it reminded Gladys of stories she had heard at cocktail parties about linen-suited jungle missionaries that had undergone monstrous transformations at the hands of uncivilized and cruel tribes.
It moved up the hill towards her and, not knowing what else to do, Gladys called out a hello. The only response was the awful high note sounding again, making the creature moving towards her the unmistakeable source. Gladys’s breath caught in her throat and she felt her legs leaden.
Both fear and common sense told her to run, but she found her legs stiff with paralysis like that of a dream. She watched its implacable advance until she was bursting to move, but when she turned away from the creature, she found her retreat blocked by the hill’s edge, nothing in front of her but a drop into a cold, blue river below.
Gladys spun, coming face-to-face with the creature, it’s bulging eyes no more than a foot from her own. It held up a hand in greeting, an oddly normal gesture completed by the bright shine of paint on its nails. It’s proximity caused Gladys to catch her breath, nearly falling backward off the cliff.
“How long have you been screaming?” Asked a hollow-voice from behind the mask.
“What?”
“You’ve been wailing since you saw me. It’s been a good three minutes. Doesn’t that seem impossible to you?” The bulky, fibrous head titled questioningly, like a bug-eyed pet that had arrived at Gladys’s feet.
“I – ” Gladys started then stopped, realizing her mouth had been hanging open. She closed it, then opened it to speak again. “I most certainly have not been screaming.”
“Yes, you have.”
“No I haven’t. You’ve been making that awful noise.” She stopped, suddenly upset that she had let this masquerade frighten her so. “Are you mad? Is that why you’re in a park chasing people around?”
Monster or not, the creature was very articulate, enunciating each of its words carefully, as if speaking from the bottom of a well. “Did you know there’s a pandemic on?”
Gladys blinked. “What do you mean? Has the Spanish Flu come back?”
Gladys could almost see the creature’s smile in the short expulsion of breath her question caused. Instead of immediately answering, it looked out onto the river behind her. In doing so, it revealed the pale human flesh between the collar of its grey suit and the seam of the mask. “We haven’t had the Spanish Flu in about a century,” it replied.
“What?” Gladys blinked, the statement disorienting her. Instead she focused on, “You’re wearing a mask. Did you do that to frighten me?”
“Not at all. It’s a Kifwebe Death Mask. You wouldn’t be able to see me without it.”
“Why not?”
“Well, as the name implies, because you’re dead.”
“That’s preposterous.”
“Is it?” The creature stood straight and took a breath as if preparing for a litany. “You died on this spot in 1918. Your name is Gladys Parker, you were a member of an acting troupe that was stranded in the city by the Spanish Flu when it shut down train services. It also shut down theaters, so you were out of work. I imagine it was very boring for you.” The creature turned its eyes to Gladys, their blankness less frightening. “So you spent a lot of times in parks like this one.” The creature spread its arms towards the river, and from their apex Gladys could now see that the collection of hills was the center of an island, bordered by rivers. Beyond those, high-rise buildings faced the lovely green on which she now stood.
“If it makes you feel better,” the creature continued, “you’re famous now. You’re the only ghost in town that walks by day.”
Reminded again of her supposed demise, Gladys looked around. For the first time in what felt like a long time, she saw the skyscrapers of the city beyond the park. They were taller, and more of them, then she had ever noticed before. After a time she said, “If I’m dead, how can you see me? How are we speaking?”
The creature placed its hands with their bright, nails on either side of its fibrous face. “When the complaints started, I did a lot of research into you. I found out you were part Congolese. The Luba are a Congo tribe that make thesemasks. It’s what allows you to see me.” The creature raised her hands, lifting the mask, and all of it disappeared. The mask, the creature, it’s suit. A moment later it reappeared, the monstrous face back in place. “See?”
Gladys blinked, struggling to understand how this ugly stranger had learned so much about her. Light-skinned enough to pass for white in a world that cared more about that than her talent, Gladys had learned to hide her ancestry better than most, and had lived as such. Unable to face it even now, she asked, “So the people know my background.”
The creature gave a long pause. Then, “Not really.”
“Then why are there complaints about me?”
“There’s a new pandemic on, Gladys. It’s different than the old one, but a lots the same. Curfews, bans on public gatherings, that sort of thing. Things have gotten so bad here people have been told to stay in their houses.”
A faint memory of being trapped in a hotel room with nothing to do came to Gladys. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“That’s good. Because by being out here, Gladys, on Park Island like you are where everyone can see you walking around, it’s reminding everyone of what they can’t have. It’s hurting them.”
“I –” Gladys stopped, unsure how to respond. “I just thought I was out watching clouds.”
“Well, now you know you aren’t.” The giant eyes and earth-dug face turned to her. “You need to go away.”
“Excuse me?”
“Gladys, you’ve been hanging out here for over 100 years. It’s time to move on.”
“To where?”
“I don’t know. You’ll have to leave to find out.”
Gladys tried to imagine leaving the park and found the idea clouded her mind like so many from the sky she had been watching. Unable to pierce that, no matter how she tried, Gladys answered, “I don’t think I want to do that.”
“Gladys, did you not hear me? You’re hurting people. A lot of people. They look out their windows and they see you sitting in the sun and doing everything they can’t do.” Gladys could see the funeral rites of the mask march across the creature’s face. “The living shouldn’t envy the dead.”
Gladys blinked, wrestling with thoughts of hours, days, weeks, of boredom, unemployment, anxiety about the future and the pointlessness of acting, artistic expression. Existence. But then she thought about leaving the island through the wall of fog around it. The unknown clawed at her heart.
Gladys waved this away with a, “Being inside isn’t so bad.”
“That’s true. Or it was for awhile. But people have been locked in for months now.”
Gladys found her anger. “Well, they’ll just have to manage it. The plague will end. All plagues do. They can last till then.”
The bark of the mask grew darker as a cloud passed over and Gladys could almost feel the passage of time as the creature was slow to respond. It did with a, “Do you know what you did when you were asked to be isolated for that long?”
For the first time in her amnesiac memory, Gladys felt a touch of cold as the cloud’s shadow continued to linger. “No.”
A gentle touch from the creature turned Gladys back around to face the steep descent to the river. “You jumped from this very spot.” It swept a gray-suited arm across the deep blue of the river’s waters. “Everybody has their breaking point and you reached yours. And watching you out here is pushing everyone else closer to theirs.”
Gladys stared down the gray cliff face. The shadow of the cloud blocking the sun grew deeper around her, as did the cold. In a moment, she stepped away from that, saying, “No, I don’t want to do that.”
“Again.”
“What?”
“You wouldn’t do that again. You’ve already done it before.”
Those words stung and Gladys replied hotly, “Please leave. I’d like to be alone now.”
“So knowing how you’re hurting other people who suffer like you suffered, you just want me to leave? You’d do that to them? Everyone?”
“Yes.” Gladys felt something like hate root her to the spot.
In a grotesquely human gesture, the creature crossed its arms, pausing in reflection. Then, “Normally, I’d offer you some time to think this over. Consider what it means. But time works differently for you, so it wouldn’t matter if I give you a day or a century to decide. It’d be the same to you.”
Gladys stepped away from the creature, preferring the company of the cliffside wind. “Don’t bother coming back. I won’t change my mind.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Why? Those people have never done anything for me. I don’t owe them anything.”
“No. I’m sorry because the mask doesn’t just let you see me.”
Gladys turned back to the creature and raised her chin, exerting her desire for it to leave. “What do you mean?”
The globular eyes lowered to the ground for a moment, breath coming from it in a different kind of expulsion. But then it raised itself up again and said, “It also let’s me touch you.”
If Gladys hadn’t been close to the cliff, the touch might have been slight, almost gentle, no more than a stranger passing by in a subway car, or a fellow theater-goer sliding by between rows. Here, though, Gladys felt herself fall back, into the embrace of gravity that had been a stranger for too long, the damp of the river reaching up to wrap itself around her like the clouds above. There was a descent, then nothing.
Alone in a park that hadn’t been without a ghost in over a century, Aggie McPherson took the death mask off, stowing it under her arm. She ran a hand through her bobbed hair, stuck to her scalp from the sweat of being under the mask, the wind from the river turning it cold. Looking down, she saw nothing but the ripples in the river as it moved around Park Island, heading out to sea.
A duck, perhaps wary of Aggie after the park’s lengthy vacancy, sat near the cliff’s edge and eyed her. It continued to stare, transfixing Aggie, until the exorcist returned its gaze.
Ballistic at how quickly one murder had turned into two I shot out into the night, spiraling directionless, trying to think of what to do next. I slammed my fist into the steering wheel, trying to clear my brain, crowded with anger at Sophie’s impetuousness, the Russian’s stupidity, and my own clouded judgement. I stomped on the pedals with swollen feet and I wondered if heading back to the tenement would only get Sophie killed as well. After driving for a few lightless eternities to calm down a bit, Cheryl’s voice could be heard over my own beating blood enough that it pointed out a simple truth: If I never headed back to the apartment and Sophie found me murdered, she wouldn’t stop until she was dead herself.
That was some consolation. Enough that it gave me headspace to come up with something that resembled a plan.
I thought a lot about Mitnick and Sartre, and I remembered a name that Atwell had mentioned. I reversed course, heading south, until I found another lone payphone. Next to a converted barn that now served as a tram station, the phone’s bubble covering and square face made it look like an alien thing that had plummeted to Earth. I knew how it felt.
I parked a ways from it, left the motor running and hopped out, running fast enough that I nearly collided with it. I yanked the receiver off the cradle and dialed 112.
Barely audible through the static of the old copper transmission lines I heard a voice say something in a calm, professional, and slightly bored French. I disregarded the question I didn’t understand and said in French, “I need to speak to Inspector Rotella.”
Between the garbled voice and my grasp of the local dialect I didn’t understand much of what came back from the operator, but I’m sure it was the equivalent of, “Sir, this line is for emergencies only.”
I struggled with how to respond in French, but fortunately had practiced what I was going to say while driving around searching for one of France’s three working payphones. I told the operator, “Tell Inspector Rotella there’s a fire at a gas station in L’Ariane. It’s not far from Cemetery Hill.”
Afraid that my dog French would give me away, I slammed the receiver down before the operator confirmed what I said. I ran back to the car, the chaos I was causing to cover my tracks rippling out from the payphone with its last transmission.
Despite the exhaustion that adrenaline was wrecking on me, it was still pretty early in the evening by European nightlife standards. I drove south and west, skirting the mountains and staying out of the city proper, till I came to the river. I turned full south then, driving through tunnels that cut through the dark belly of the mountains, until they began a gradual descent that narrowed the closer it got to the sea. The hills were eventually replaced by the city’s edge, a fringe of rotating decrepit industrial sectors and their gentrified counterparts, converted old factories and warehouses that had become duty-free shops and high-priced lofts, both the size of American-style malls.
In between a couple of the warehouses that were still stained with the ghosts of past work, I pointed the car east, into the city, the smooth concrete of the riverside becoming rounded cobblestones as I drove into history. In between the bookends of old mills and workshops, I hunted for a place to park. I accelerated the car between lights, afraid of being spotted even as the irregular pace I set probably drew attention of whoever might have seen me. Eventually, I abandoned the Lexus at some dark, unnamed spot, wiping it down for fingerprints in the shadow of what smelled like a vacant paper mill.
I trudged down the alley that would take me to the Factory, the collar of my peacoat turned up against the evening drizzle in the hopes that both might keep anyone from seeing my face. At the door I paid the full admission without question, hoping the bouncer, this one with a full head of hair, might not remember me.
It was only by the time I was inside that I realized I hadn’t been feeling the earthshaking bass that I had before. I must have arrived between sets. The cavern of The Factory, much to my disappointment, was dark and empty, no stage lights, dancing, or music to distract from me. I scurried like a beetle across the cement floor, waiting for a boot to crush me. My eyes kept darting to the stage, its cyclopean speakers the only thing that might hide someone besides the square pillars that dotted the floor.
In comparison, dodging through the gate of the Abattoir felt comforting. Whatever relief this provided, though, was quickly dissolved by a fast circuit between the red booths that provided no sign of the Idiots. In case they were hiding under tables, I made the rounds again. When that, unsurprisingly, didn’t produce different results I bought a ridiculously over-priced bottle of water off of a crimson-haired waitress and then sat down in a booth where I could see both the entrance from the dance floor and the fire exit. I sat and waited, my mind reminding me that Max had told me the Idiots were at The Factory “most nights” and this might not be one of them.
