Floors: (21 page)

“Thanks for every thing,” Remi said, pulling Leo aside where they could talk one last time without being overheard. “It was the best day of my life, and I’m not just saying that. If you find Blop, tell him I said hello.”

The two boys might as well have lived on different planets. Staten Island and Manhattan were worlds apart.

“I don’t know what to say,” Leo offered. “It feels like we were close to …
something
. We just can’t figure out what.”

“You’ve got a date with destiny in the morning, remember? Who knows, maybe our luck will change.”

In all the chaos, Leo had totally forgotten:
Six A.M. tomorrow, duck elevator.
It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing.

Remi rejoined his mom, and Ms. Sparks escorted them through the lobby and out the front doors, where they stood staring through the glass. The doors were locked and the two started down the path for the subway.

“I know you didn’t take the necklace, Mom,” said Remi.

“I know you do,” said Pilar, putting an arm around him.

They walked in silence then, both of them dreaming of what might have been.

Ms. Sparks was back in the Puzzle Room in no time flat with final instructions for the maintenance man and his son.

“Pack your things in the morning,” she commanded. “I’ll be bringing in a new crew by the afternoon. Enjoy your last night at the Whippet.”

She patted her pocket and started for the stairs. “I’ve got some good news to deliver, wouldn’t you say?”

And then, just like that, she was gone. Leo looked around the room and suddenly realized something terrible. It wasn’t just Ms. Sparks who had left.

Everyone
was gone.

Leo and his dad walked to the basement, maybe for the last time.

“We’ve really come to the end, I guess,” said Clarence Fillmore. “I had hoped we’d see him again, but I think it’s really true.”

“What’s true?”

Leo’s big, lumbering father took a deep breath as he opened the door to the basement. “Merganzer D. Whippet isn’t coming back.”

Bernard Frescobaldi was waiting in his black town car when Pilar and Remi unlocked the small walking gate and started down the wide, empty sidewalk. He noticed how unhappy they were, but made no effort to help them as they started their long night journey to Staten Island.

Milton smiled knowingly from the front seat.

“This is going better than I could have hoped,” said Bernard, pulling his fedora down low over his eyes in case they searched the street. It wouldn’t have mattered behind the dark windows, but Bernard was an exceptionally secretive man. He took no chances, especially when he was this close to the prize he’d worked so hard for.

Twenty minutes later, still sitting in the car, Bernard glanced at his very expensive watch.

“What’s taking so long?” he asked. “I thought for sure the gate would open by now.”

Five more minutes passed with Milton calming his wealthy boss, and then the driving gate opened up. Someone from the inside had opened it, letting the black town car in.

“Time to prepare for the meeting,” said Bernard Frescobaldi. “Tomorrow, the Whippet Hotel will finally get the new owner it deserves.”

The call center in the basement had one giant plug, the head of which was bigger than a basketball with a four-inch-wide cord to match. It took both Leo and his dad to pull it out of the wall, but when they did, Daisy stopped printing ticker tape. The shark, for the first time all day, was silent. All the lights on the wall went out, and for a split second, Leo imagined the Whippet Hotel as it once was: full of laughter and smiles, mystery and intrigue, not a care from the world outside.

Both Fillmore men got into their pajamas and brushed their teeth. They went about their business rather slowly, savoring every bittersweet moment in the cozy basement that had been their home for a good long time.

“Mom would have wanted a flower on a night like this,” said Leo, risking the possibility of turning a very bad night into a sad one to boot. But he had a feeling, even with every thing that had gone wrong, that something had changed. “Do you think about her?” Leo asked as they both lay down on their cots, the washing machine sitting quiet and cold between them.

Mr. Fillmore stood up, looked about the room, then grabbed his cot by the edge and pulled the old frame out from the wall. He took hold of Leo’s next, pulling his cot away from the wall as well, then he got back into
bed and lay on his side, where he could see his boy’s face.

“I should have done that years ago,” said Leo’s dad.

“Actually, the washer blocks your snoring, especially when it’s running.”

“Leo, listen to me now. We’re going to be fine, and none of this is your fault.”

Leo held back tears, because he was pretty sure it
was
his fault.

“And yes, I think about your mom all the time. I hope you do, too.”

“I do, Dad.”

There was a long silence in which Leo thought maybe a tear had fallen from his dad’s eye, but it was dark and he couldn’t be sure.

“I think she would have liked this place,” Leo’s dad said. “But more than that, I think she would have wanted us to keep living. You think?”

“I do, Dad.”

Mr. Fillmore held the ring on the chain, rubbing it like it was a good luck charm. He’d had a hard time forgiving himself for letting it slip away during the move to the Whippet.

“I felt bad for losing your mother’s ring. You know that, don’t you?”

“Of course I know,” Leo said. “It just happened, and anyway, it’s back now.”

Clarence Fillmore smiled. “It’s different now. I still miss her, but I’m not so sad anymore.”

Leo leaned over and pulled the white box out from its hiding spot. He opened the lid and white light filled the room. The ghost orchid bloomed to life.

“I found this for us,” said Leo. “I thought maybe Ms. Sparks had killed it, but I guess not.”

The two of them couldn’t help it then; maintenance men being notoriously emotional, they both shed a tear or two.

“Fresh start tomorrow?” asked Mr. Fillmore, his voice filled with every thing the moment demanded: sadness for what had been lost, unease about the future, but above all, something new — a readiness to start living again.

“Fresh start tomorrow,” said Leo, sinking into his cot one last time.

They watched the ghost orchid for a time, and then Leo drifted off to sleep and Mr. Fillmore closed the white box and silently carried it out of the basement.

He knew a certain gardener who needed a ghost orchid even more than he did.

T
he alarm on Leo’s watch went off at five thirty in the morning, but it didn’t matter. He had awoken with the first light of day to find the note stuck to his bedpost.

The box was gone, and for a moment Leo worried he might need it for something. But barring that, he didn’t plan to ask for the flower back. Mr. Phipps would know how to care for it, and Leo’s dad was right: It was
the perfect gift for a displaced gardener who’d had his garden ransacked.

Leo turned off the alarm on his watch and adjusted his position in the duck elevator. He knew he had to be there at six, as the message had said, but there was no reason to wait. He might get sidetracked by some other duty or Ms. Sparks might try to kick them out of the building on sight. Better to hide in the duck elevator and make sure he didn’t miss the appointment altogether. It was an appointment, he was sure, that would not be offered twice.

At 5:47, Leo heard Ms. Sparks come into the lobby and make some keys, for what, he did not know or care. A period of silence followed, and then, precisely at six o’clock, the duck elevator moved. Leo did not pull the lever or press the button for the roof, but either way, those things would never have made the elevator move as it did now. No, this was something new. The duck elevator was moving sideways, not up or down. It was, in fact, moving parallel to the lobby, under the grand staircase Leo had climbed many times.

The duck elevator stopped, and when it did, a section of the back wall slid slowly down, revealing four buttons and a frosted sheet of glass.

“Here we go,” said Leo.

The finger was back, writing a message on the cold, frosted glass.

Leo felt supremely excited as he read the message, because he knew then that his journey with Remi had given them the knowledge only they could possibly have. The only way a person could know the order in which to push purple, blue, green, and white buttons would be if they had four boxes to match. Leo had gotten the boxes in a certain order. He knew which button to push first, and so he did.

Purple.

The elevator moved abruptly sideways once more, this time in a different direction.

Leo pushed the next button.

Blue.

The elevator moved again, lurching to a stop.

Green
was pushed and the elevator moved once more.

“Only one button left,” said Leo. He wished Remi were with him, or at least Betty, Blop, or Merle the flying goat. He felt suddenly very alone in the world as his finger hovered over the white button.

And then he pushed it.

The duck elevator began spinning in a circle, then it shot up through the Whippet Hotel as fast as the Double Helix had ever gone. Leo put his hands on the low ceiling and braced himself. Either the duck elevator was about to stop, or they were going right through the roof and into the air.

The duck elevator did stop, almost as suddenly as it had started.

The number 13 appeared above the four buttons with the sound of a bell.

“But there is no floor thirteen,” Leo said. But even as he said it, he knew there had always been thirteen floors. He’d simply never been invited to any of the secret floors or the
very
secret floor at the top.

Leo took a deep breath to calm himself, threw open the duck elevator door, and crawled out into the room.

He stood up, but did not speak. Overhead he saw the bottom of the pond, which he now realized was made of glass. He could see the duck feet flapping and the fish swimming. Light poured in through the pond, filling the thirteenth floor with a dreamy, golden hue. There were books every where, on tables and endless shelves winding this way and that. There were long, lazy-looking couches and overstuffed chairs. There were
huge beanbags, some pink like a pig and others black-and-white like dairy cows. Colored rings of every size drifted near the ceiling, held by some unknowable magnetic force, and flying holographic farm animals swooped high and low. But mostly there were books. Lots and lots of books.