Blood Sports (32 page)

Tom tested each of the bars. None were loose. The bars were thick, solid and painted the same colour as the floor, pastel green, a colour beloved of old hospitals and mental wards. Tom wrapped his feet in dirty wash rags and kicked the lock until his legs went rubbery. It didn’t do any good, but he felt better and it amused Mel.

Tom stood on tiptoe on the toilet. He experimentally punched the ceiling to see if it would give. It was solid concrete. After cradling his fist against his stomach for a few minutes, he wrapped his hands in an old baby shirt and shook the wire mesh around the fluorescent tubes, hoping for a loose screw. Mel got into the spirit of things and banged the walls. Paulie made them tea.

On one side of the room, the cell had a metal sink, a metal toilet, and a microwave on top of a cocktail fridge. On the other side, it had a queen-sized foam mattress on the floor, a set of sheets, a wool blanket, two plastic milk crates with a pillowcase thrown over for a nightstand, a garbage pail, and a metal enamel wash basin.

Firebug had also left a file box filled with baby clothes, a box of diapers, a case of baby food, three cans of liquid baby formula. Their grub was a short list of eight eggs, four bananas, ten packages of instant noodles, a box of sugar cubes, and a tin of Red Rose tea. The cutlery was plastic. They had three Styrofoam cups. Paulie gave him the bathrobe.

“We need MacGyver,” Tom said.

“Told you,” Paulie said. “I’ve tried all that.”

“Yeah, well.” Tom sighed.

“Mmm,” Paulie said, trying to tempt Mel to drink the formula out of a baby jar she’d cleaned. “Tasty milk.”

Mel shoved her face in the mattress and turned it away.

“I think this used to be a daycare or something,” Paulie said, eyeballing the mural with its happy bunnies.

“Yeah,” Tom said.

“The baby clothes smell pretty musty and the walker must be twenty years old.”

Tom considered the water rings dried varying shades of brown on the floor’s light green paint near the bars. “Maybe a play room.”

Paulie stroked Mel’s hair. “That makes more sense.”

“Jazz phoned,” Tom said. “She said she’d check up on us if you didn’t call her back. She’d be worried.”

“Firebug brought Mel down here. I watched her on the security monitor. He said he’d shut off the lights and leave her in the dark unless I did what he said. So he gave me a cell phone. And I called Jazz. And told her you’d gone paranoid. Ripped up the apartment. That I was hiding from you.”

They were sunk. If no one realized they were missing, no one was looking for them.

“Leo’s on the security camera at work,” Tom said. “They screwed up there. That might help.”

Paulie’s silence said she didn’t think so, but didn’t want to say it out loud.

Just before dinner, he had his second seizure. When he woke up from it, he curled up beside the toilet, retching and shaking. He didn’t know what drugs he’d been given, but on top of the pain and the lack of sleep and the sudden absence of his regular epilepsy meds, it felt like he was just getting off a three-week bender.

Paulie made noodles and eggs for supper. Tom stuck to plain tea. She mopped his forehead with a rag still pink from wiping the dried blood from his chest.

“It gets better,” Paulie said.

“It gets better,” Tom repeated, willing himself to believe it.

The lights flickered. Trembling and miserable and too nauseous to lie down, Tom sat beside the mattress, holding Paulie’s hand. Mel fisted her hand in Paulie’s hair. The basement went dark for three or four heartbeats and then lit up again. Paulie shifted. She had been waking on and off since she lay down with Mel. He squeezed her hand and she went still again. Tom let go of the breath he had been holding.

When the power went, they would still have water. But they would run out of food in less than a week. Tom wondered if Firebug had paid the electric bill. If they had a few weeks or a few days or a few hours before the basement went permanently dark.

10 JULY 1998

They hung off the light’s protective wire mesh, kicking and tugging. The screws were rusted to the metal frame so they were hoping to pull them loose from the concrete. Tom’s end squeaked. He slipped first, dizzy. Paulie swung her legs up and tried to get her toes hooked in the mesh. She slipped, landed on him, and they both lay on the floor, winded. Mel shook the empty ice-cream bucket Paulie had filled with the lids from the empty baby food jars.

“One more time,” Paulie said.

The first screw came loose on their eighteenth try. It was six inches long and as fat as Mel’s thumb. They paused. Tom couldn’t tell if he was having an aura or an anxiety attack, and was relieved it was only a precursor. He woke to find Paulie playing patty-cake with Mel.

The next screw came loose on their twenty-fourth try. Their fingers went red and puffy. When the third screw came loose, a
row of screws popped and the mesh bent toward the floor until they rested their feet on the ground. Paulie stood on the toilet. Tom carefully broke one of the baby jars in the sink and handed Paulie the strongest, sharpest-looking edge. Paulie scraped the concrete behind the lights where the wires went up through the floor. A splatter of bits rained on the floor.

“It’s soft,” she said.

Tom whooped. Paulie sat on the toilet and rocked, hugging herself. Mel got scared and wailed. Tom and Paulie laughed. Tom picked Mel up and swung her around. Mel bawled until he gave her to Paulie.

Paulie cooked the eggs before they unplugged the cocktail fridge. Tom lifted the microwave off the top of the fridge and put it on the floor near the wall. He pushed the fridge under their chosen dig site. Paulie held the fridge still while Tom climbed onto it. He’d wrapped his hands to protect him from the heat of the light and the glass. The falling concrete made him sneeze. He used a broken baby jar to dig about six inches deep before he had to stop and lie down. Paulie jumped on the fridge and attacked the concrete. He picked up Mel, rolled in the bed with her, kissing her face until she covered it with her hands.

They took a break when they hit hardwood. Paulie wolfed down three eggs and two packages of soup. Tom couldn’t manage anything except the broth. Mel ate his noodles and demolished two jars of apple sauce. Tom pushed his eggs toward Mel. She wasn’t interested in them either.

“If we widen the hole,” Paulie said, “we can stand on the fridge and punch through with the microwave. If we take out the glass and the door, it should still be heavy enough.”

“My lady of destruction,” Tom said, leaning in to kiss her.

Mel rolled her empty jar across the floor, studying it.

Paulie looked up, thoughtful. “If you stand on my shoulders, you’d probably fit through the hole better.”

Tom said nothing, sipping his broth.

“Because of my big, nursing boobs,” Paulie amended. “Not because you’re, um … you know.”

“You’re going up first,” Tom said.

Tom pushed her butt up. Paulie’s legs scissored as she grunted and squirmed her way through the hole in the ceiling. Mel screamed. She bobbed furiously. Her face went dark, dark red. When Paulie finally pulled herself through, Tom jumped down and scooped Mel up.

“Yay, Mommy, yay!” Tom said.

Mel cried harder. Tom braced his feet on the slippery top of the fridge and hoped Mel wouldn’t move too much.

“What’s the matter?” Tom said.

“Just a minute!” Paulie shouted back. She came back to the hole, out of breath. She reached her arms down as Tom lifted Mel. Mel squealed, excitedly giving frog kicks.

Tom passed Paulie the bucket filled with unopened formula tins and baby food jars and the packages of noodles and the eggs. He handed her two packages of diapers and the wipes.

“Mel, honey, stay close,” Paulie said.

They linked forearms and Paulie leaned back. He caught the edge of the hardwood and wormed his way through, with Paulie
grabbing him under the pits and hauling. One of the straps on her sundress flapped loose. Her hair was dusty and wild.

Near the bathroom door, a pair of sneaker-clad feet stuck out from under a sheet. Where the outline of the head was, the sheet was soaked red. Mel scooted toward the baby walker that had been abandoned beside the body.