Warp (14 page)

“What happened?” he whispered.

“Not too fucking much.”

“I was behind the shower curtain.” He put his hand on his chest. “Held my breath. What do you think?”

“I doubt he's coming back.”

Peters nodded, and he looked over at the doorway where Hollis had been standing.

“What's in there?” he whispered.

“I don't know. Looks like somebody's study.”

Peters went over and looked inside.

“Are you going to check it?” said Hollis.

“Just for a second.”

“I'll keep watch.”

Said the Joker to the Thief.

“You do that.”

Hollis waited at the door while Peters searched. He threw back the curtains, revealing a full view of the front lawn: the grass was now visibly green in the thin early-morning light, and the miniature lamppost had been turned off. Hollis could hear him going through the room at top speed, opening and shutting drawers and swearing, pushing aside clothes hangers in the closet, wrestling a drawer out of its slot. He leaned his head back until it rested against the wall. His eyes closed.

Something in his mind clicked, and he opened them again. He went back over to the Monet poster and pushed his hand up behind it: there, in one corner, he could feel two keys taped to the brown paper backing. He ripped them off. The keys were bronze-colored, and someone had written
HOUSE
along the tape in blue ballpoint pen.

“Dude,” he said urgently. “Come here.”

He snapped his fingers, and Peters stopped searching and came out of the study.

“What is it?”

Hollis tossed him the keys, and Peters caught them one-handed.

“When a thief thieves a thief,” Hollis said, “God laughs.”

Peters just stood there for a second, turning them over in his hand.

“Jesus,” he said, unbelievingly. He looked up at Hollis. “Let's get the hell out of here.”

He shoved the keys in his pocket and started walking quickly down the hall back towards the stairs. Hollis checked the hall in the other direction, but it was clear. When he turned back, Peters had started to run.

Hollis jogged after him. The first floor had been dark when they first searched it, but now the curtains glowed with the sunlight behind them. Hollis walked through the entrance hall into the dining room, where he found his can of beer where he had left it on the table. He took it with him. In the kitchen the clock in the microwave said 6:18. He scooped up the rest of the six-pack from off the counter. They were frosted with moisture, and he swiped away the wet rings with his sleeve.

Peters was already waiting for him in the little storage room. Hollis carefully closed the heavy inner door behind him.

“Quick, Marty!” he said hoarsely. “Back to the DeLorean!”

Outside on the landing they had to blink their eyes against the light. There was no frost, but it was chilly, and water glittered coldly on the grass. Hollis took a moment to wrap his coat more tightly around him before he stepped off the porch. They jogged across the lawn and part of the way down the street before they gave it up and slowed down to a walk.

“Jesus,” Peters said. “I think I'm going to have an embolism.”

Hollis felt dizzy. It had been a couple of days since he'd had a real meal. He touched his chin with his hand: he was already growing a thin, straggly goatee. It was an effort to keep walking straight; he glanced over, but didn't seem to notice. Yellow and red leaves settled and spun their way down through the clear air.

A Volvo station wagon was warming up in the driveway of the Victorian farmhouse across the street, sending up a plume of white exhaust, but the driver paid no attention to them. When they got to the Lexus, Peters unlocked it, and Hollis squeezed in past the fir tree on the passenger side. The moment he sat down he felt completely drained, and he let his head loll back against the headrest.

“You okay with driving?” he said.

“Of course.”

“I feel like fucking hell,” Hollis said. “God, look at all this fucking daylight—it's so disgustingly cheery.”

Peters started the engine, and the headlights came on, pale and weak in the early-morning light. He snapped them off.

“Guess we won't be needing those.” He cleared his throat. “You want a cigarette?”

“God, no. Is there any food in this thing?”

Peters shrugged, released the brake, and cranked the wheel all the way to the left. He pulled out into a tight U-turn. The street was wide and empty, and he floored it.

“Slow down!” he said, to himself. “You'll get us all killed!”

Hollis sniffed.

“So are you going to call that girl?” Peters said. “The one you met at Amanda's?”

“Jesus, I already told you, I went out with her. It didn't fly.”

“You could still call her,” said Peters.

Hollis looked out the window at the houses.

“I would prefer not to discuss the matter further.”

With his eyes half open, Hollis watched the scenery fly by. For a long time neither of them said anything. There was forest on either side, pine trees, and signs for frost heaves and deer crossings. He couldn't tell if they were taking the same route as before or a new one.

He closed his eyes.

*   *   *

When they got to the center of town they came up on a yellow school bus, and Peters stopped to wait for it. He nudged Hollis. A high school girl was hurrying to catch it, coming towards them along the sidewalk.

“Look at that.”

She had a pale, clear oval face and ringlety brown hair that fell down to her shoulders. She wore her backpack with the straps over both shoulders, and she jogged towards the bus with her thumbs hooked behind the straps. Hollis watched her getting on.

“La beauté,”
he said,
“c'est la promesse de bonheur.”

“She's more your type, chum,” Peters said. “One of those Andie MacDowell types.”

Shall I have her sent round to the castle, milord?

Aye. And see that she's given a good bath first.

When they reached the on-ramp to the highway, Peters took it without slowing down.

“Hand me my shades, would you?” he said. “I think they're in the glove compartment.”

Hollis found them. Peters put them on in front of his little round glasses and looked at himself in the rearview mirror.

“I am become a Callow Youth,” he said solemnly.

They were in the commuter rush from the suburbs into Boston, but it was too early for the highway to be very crowded. Accelerating up to highway speed, Peters reclined the seat a notch and leaned back.

“I can't believe people are going to work now,” said Hollis.

“Mm.” Peters shook his fist at the other cars. “Do you people know you're
alive
? Crawling along, in your little metal coffins—”

Hollis reached down to where the beer was, around his feet, and opened a can. He toasted them discreetly.

*   *   *

When they reached the entrance ramp to the turnpike the traffic became heavier and Peters slowed down. For a long time the highway ran between two huge cliffs of bare red rock, with slicks of water running down them where blasting had exposed underground springs.

Hollis's eyes blurred, and he didn't even notice they were back in the city until they drove under the bridge into Allston. Harvard Avenue was congested, and they inched along it towards the intersection with Brighton.

“Where are you going to park?” said Hollis.

“I don't know.” Peters rubbed his eyes with his free hand. “Probably I'll just put it in the lot across from Blake's and walk home.”

“I have that ‘Video Killed the Radio Star' song in my head. I can't get it out.”

“Whoa,” said Peters. “Eighties kitsch alert.”

There was a slow light at the corner of Commonwealth. Hollis watched the people crossing in front of them on the crosswalk.

With the light behind it her blond hair was dark.

Peters drove a few extra blocks up the hill and made a U-turn to get on the right side of the street in front of Hollis's stoop. They both noticed at the same time that the sky was full of birds, smallish and black, swarms of them, crossing above the street in great, silent waves that constantly changed their size and shape. Each individual stood out clearly and distinctly against the white background of the sky. Hollis and Peters watched for a minute or so, looking up blearily through the windshield, until the flock had dwindled down to a thin scattering, then a couple of isolated groups, and then finally a few frantic stragglers flapping desperately along after the others.

“Geese,” said Peters.

“Can't be,” Hollis said. “Geese are way bigger than that. And don't they fly in V's?”

“I guess. I wasn't really sure if that was a myth or not.”

Hollis opened the door.

“Anyway, I'll see you tonight.”

“I'll call you,” said Peters.

“Right.”

He shut the door behind him, and Peters gave him a
bra
sign through the window.

It was disorienting to be out in the cold on the sidewalk in the early morning—the sunlight seemed to be coming at him from the wrong side. Peters peeled out, dead leaves flying up into the air in his wake. An old woman who lived in the building was on her way out as Hollis went in, and she nodded and murmured something to him in a Russian accent.

I am an android, a sophisticated computer endowed with the form of a human simulacrum.

When Hollis reached his door, he realized he didn't have his keys. He checked his pants pockets, and his overcoat, but they weren't there. He tried to remember what he'd done with them—he'd taken them out of his pocket and put them somewhere, but now he couldn't seem to remember where. He stood there for a few minutes in the darkness of the hallway, with his hand on his forehead. He was very tired. The tiny glass-and-metal eye of the peephole stared dully back at him. He looked down at the scratched wood around the keyhole on his door, then up and down the empty, badly lit hallway.

After a long time, he put his hand on the doorknob and pushed in on it, without turning.

The door opened.

 

CHAPTER 8

FRIDAY, 3:30 P.M.

It was three-thirty in the afternoon, and Hollis was standing waiting for the Green Line trolley. It was overcast. Cars tore past him in both directions. It was Friday—people were getting out of work early to start the weekend.

He stood inside a plastic shelter on the platform. There was a subway map on the wall, covered with unreadable black graffiti signatures written with a paint pen. Hollis took a scrap of paper out of his pocket and checked it against the map. It was a page torn out of a road atlas. He'd circled one of the intersections on it with a Magic Marker.

He still needed a shave, but he felt better now that he'd slept. He'd gotten up at three, taken a shower, and had some breakfast. The sun was already low on the horizon behind the clouds. Looking back up the hill, he could see the single oversized headlight of the inbound train shining in the distance, still half a mile away, but it would take five more minutes for it to work its way down to where he was waiting.

A circle of old retirees was standing around under the shelter next to him.

“Yeah, I gave it to her,” said a white-haired, red-faced man. “I said, ‘Listen, you wanna talk about rubbers? Save it for the bridge club.'”

They broke up laughing.

“You told her.”

“I certainly did. ‘Save it for the bridge club,' I said.”

He shook his head.

“She didn't know what to say.”

Honest, Officer, he threw himself right onto the tracks. I couldn't stop him.

When the train pulled in it was already mostly filled with sporty, well-fed BC students heading into the city. Hollis got on and rode standing up, hanging on to a steel post, so he could look out the window. The train was incredibly slow—it stopped at every corner, all the way along Commonwealth Ave. into the city.

While it waited at a red light, Hollis spotted a woman about his age standing on the curb with her back to him. Her hair was dyed blond, and it was piled up on top of her head in a careless, complicated, but somehow elegant heap. She was wearing a denim jacket with a giant mandala scribbled on the back in black ballpoint pen.

I read an electron emission signature, sir. A life form.

Let me tek you away from all zees.

The train picked up some speed as they rolled out of the residential neighborhood into BU, and the clacking of the wheels accelerated and crescendoed. From where he was standing Hollis could look down into the interiors of the cars moving along past him, and down onto the sidewalks, where assorted college students were pushing past each other, wearing sweaters and carrying their books and backpacks: punks, jocks, artsy types, frat boys.

Soon your pitiful little planet will be mine. Oh yes—quite soon.

The tracks sloped down, cement walls rose up in the windows on both sides, and suddenly the train was underground. Hollis's reflection appeared in front of him in the window against the blackness of the tunnel. Every couple of minutes the lights would flicker out for a second or two, leaving the car in a dimness that was strangely intimate: it was a small, dark room full of strangers.

More and more of the people getting on and off were wearing office clothes. Hollis got out at Government Center, five stops down the line. When he stepped out of the subway station he found himself on the corner of a huge, open brick plaza. It was deserted except for a few vendors selling flowers and newspapers and hot pretzels. Litter slid and tumbled across it in the freezing wind. Flags from different countries flapped on a row of white flagpoles.