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Authors: Lev Grossman

Warp (6 page)

BOOK: Warp
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CHAPTER 3

FRIDAY, 12:15 A.M.

Hollis stepped down from the rear doors of the bus. The doors folded closed behind him, and the bus roared and pulled away. He smelled the warm, invisible exhaust roiling around him in the darkness. The street was almost deserted, and bits of crumpled trash rustled along the pavement in the wind. The galleries of shops and cafés were mostly closed. Ahead of him, five or six blocks up the street, shone the lights of Harvard Square.

The temperature had dropped, and he pulled his coat around him more tightly. He could make out the white light of the tiny marquee where he was supposed to meet Peters and Blake, and he walked towards it. The sidewalk was pieced together unevenly, its old bricks slowly subsiding into the mud. Passing a café with a sunken patio, he looked down at the stacks of white wire furniture. A single long chain ran through the chairs and tables, one by one, forming a big loop that was closed with a big steel padlock.

The glass doors of the cinema were locked from the inside. A red velvet rope had been slung across all but one of them, and a woman in a white blouse and a red bow tie was wiping down the candy counter with a damp sponge. Hollis stood outside and looked at the
Metropolis
poster, which was on display in a lighted box. A handsome hero and his winsome lover, who seemed to be made out of some kind of metal, embraced in the shadow of a futuristic city that loomed up over them in the background.

“Hollis. Hollister!” Peters was standing behind him. “I've been calling your name for like half an hour.”

“Sorry, dude,” said Hollis. “Like, I was spaced.”

They joined the crowd of people leaving the cinema in twos and threes. Peters walked quickly, hands in the pockets of his jeans, while Hollis tagged along after him.

“I have to start getting more sleep,” he said.

“If you get any more sleep we're going to have to put you on an IV.”

They separated to walk around a strolling couple. A green-and-white ambulance stood idling at the curb, and Hollis peeked in one of the small rear windows as they passed. The driver sat in the front seat, studying a clipboard by the light of the dome light.

“I always try to see what's going on inside,” Hollis said. “I don't know why. I'd probably be appalled if I ever did.”

“Probably somebody got overexcited at Spoken Word Night at the Fern Bar.”

“What happened to Blake? I thought he was with you.”

“He took off before the end. Had to do something.”

“He left before it was over?” Hollis wrinkled his nose. “How can he do that?”

Peters shrugged. “Nerves of steel, I guess. You ever been there?” He pointed out a basement Thai restaurant. “The waiter tried to pick up my date. I think he thought I was gay. Oh, look, can you cover me tonight? All I have is ten dollars.”

Hollis thought for a second.

“I guess so.”


Domo arigato,
Mr. Roboto.”

To be precise, Doctor, I am not a robot, I am an android—a sophisticated computer endowed with the form of a human simulacrum, and capable of many human functions.

Hollis blew into his hands.

“Who's going to be there tonight, anyway?” he said.

“I'm not sure. Basil, probably.”

“God. I hate that guy.”

The wind came up from behind them, from the direction of the river, stirring the dead leaves in the street. Bars were closing. People were making their way home. Hollis watched a cleaning woman moving around in the office windows above a row of stores.

An orange sawhorse was set up in the middle of the sidewalk, where some bricks were missing.

“In the student revolt in Paris they ripped up the cobblestones out of the streets,” Peters said as he walked around it. “I guess they threw them at people or something. Maybe they were for the barricades. Anyway, there was all this nice yellow beach sand under them, so people started saying ‘Under the Pavement, the Beach.' It turned into a big slogan in the sixties.”

“Them crazy French.”

Peters looked through his jacket pockets for a cigarette, then reached over and put his hand in Hollis's pocket. He pulled out the lining, along with a clump of lint.

“Don't you smoke anymore?”

“I never smoked,” Hollis said, stuffing the lining back in.

“You smoke pot.”

“Pot is easier. Anyway, I don't anymore—I keep getting the paranoid trip.”

Peters snorted. “Maybe you can be a lung model.”

Two young women turned the corner out of a side street and walked ahead of them, in the same direction. Both were slender and stylishly dressed, and Peters put his hand on Hollis's arm. He pointed and made a gurgling noise in his throat. They passed a little green public park, a rectangular swath of grass with a few trees and a memorial statue. The grass showed some bare patches. A few couples still sat there in the dark, huddled together on benches.

“I think I know one of them,” said Peters, jerking his head at the two women. “Oh, guess who called me yesterday—Evan Goldsmith. I was just going out last night, and he calls me up out of the blue and asks me if I get Channel 5. So I say, sure. So he says, well, I can't get it, so could you turn on your TV for a while—the Tony awards were on or something—so he can listen to it
over the phone
.”

He laughed.

“He was still on when I got home.”

“He's insane,” Hollis said. “There's something wrong with him. He once watched
Predator
all the way through on cable, scrambled.”

This close to Harvard Square the street was still full of traffic, even though it was after midnight. Peters and Hollis had to wait to cross the street. The two women were waiting too.

“Eleanor,” said Peters, after a second, and one of the women started. She turned around. She was tall, at least as tall as Hollis, and she had a scarf wrapped around her head that made her short brown hair stand straight up.

“Oh, hi, Peters,” she said, putting her hand on her chest. “You scared me. How are you? I thought you graduated.”

She smiled sweetly, showing her teeth, which stuck out slightly. She wore a dark blue overcoat with a man's suit jacket underneath. She'd tucked the scarf into her collar.

“I did,” said Peters. “I'm teaching for Professor Delahay now.”

“I thought Delahay went to Rutgers.”

“Not till the spring. It's a dual appointment.”

Peters put his hand behind Hollis's shoulders.

“This is my bosom friend Hollis.”

They shook hands.

“Eleanor Garr.”

Peters turned to the other woman, who introduced herself as Kirsten. She was short, and plain, with straight blond hair cut in a China Chop. The light changed, and traffic started going the other way, but they didn't cross.

“So how's Jason?” said Peters. “Is he still working for Giuliani?”

Eleanor nodded. “He hates it.” She wrinkled up her nose. “He was up this weekend. They're sending him to the Carolinas.”

“What are you guys doing right now?”

“Oh, God knows. Probably going home.”

“I have midterms all this week,” Kirsten said. She turned her head to one side, slightly languorously, and looked over at Eleanor. “We were just at the Casablanca. I think Ron Howard was there—I think I recognized him.”

A lock of Eleanor's bangs had escaped the scarf and was falling down over her high forehead.

“You're not related to Teri Garr, are you?” Hollis said, looking at her. “You look a little like her.”

“Do I?” She flashed him a smile and raised a hand to her cheek experimentally. “God, I hope not.”

“That's a morbid idea, Hollis,” said Peters. “Listen, we're going to be at the GT for a while—you guys should drop by.”

The
WALK
signal was gone again, but the street was empty, and Eleanor stepped off the curb.

“Maybe we will.” She smiled again. “See you later.”

“See you,” said Peters.

“Nice to meet you, Hollis.”

Hollis and Peters stayed behind on the curb watching them go, then Peters steered them down the side street, away from the Square, to where the streets got narrower and darker.

“Why did you have to say that thing about Teri Garr?” said Peters. “Here I am introducing you to a beautiful woman—”

“Oh, for God's sake,” said Hollis. “She's an undergraduate—she must be eighteen years old.”

“So? You're only twenty-three,” said Peters. “Love is ageless. Besides, you're probably the most undergraduate person I know. And I know a lot of undergraduates.”

In the row of darkened storefronts there was one lighted window, a café where people were loading up on coffee and pastries after a night of drinking.

“How would you feel if somebody said you looked like Scott Bakula, or something? Or Bronson Pinchot? God, no wonder Eileen dumped you.”

“Teri Garr's pretty well-preserved,” Hollis said calmly. “Anyway, I broke up with Eileen, not the other way around, if you want to know the truth.”

“That's what they all say,” said Peters.

The side street led them to a wide plaza set with curvy, impressionistic stone benches. A few skinny saplings had been planted there, in square plots. A couple of buskers were still playing—two tough-looking women sitting facing each other on stools, an acoustic guitarist and a drummer. The music was very soft, almost inaudible, and the drummer bent her head down to listen more intently to the guitar. Hollis hugged his overcoat tight around him. He stopped and picked up a schedule out of a plastic milk crate sitting in front of a movie theater.

“She has a boyfriend, anyway,” Peters said, after a while. “Eleanor does. He's a real nebbish. Which reminds me—did you hear about Peter Bracey?”

They stopped to wait at another crossing.

“He got a job writing for Letterman. One day he's sitting around in his apartment, making jokes about snot. No job, no furniture, no money, no nothing. Now he's making a hundred thousand a year.”

“Jesus Christ,” said Hollis.

“He was on the
Lampoon
.
Full
of fucking connections.”

The Ghost Town Café was on the corner of a dark alley that was closed off to cars by two metal posts set in the pavement. Hollis and Peters walked down it in step, silently, hands in their pockets. The alley was in the process of being metamorphosed into a pedestrian shopping zone: they'd replaced the asphalt with cobblestones, and a nearby department store had set up a row of display windows. A tangle of wrought-iron fire escapes still hung ominously overhead, and farther along a big blue Dumpster was overflowing in an alcove. The cobblestones were wet, and they gleamed in the light from a single streetlight.

A group of three was already waiting for them outside the GT. Peters waved as they came up, and Blake gave a cursory wave back.

“Hey hey, it's the
Manqués,
” said Basil, who was tall and thin, with high cheekbones. His short dark hair was cut in a Spartacus style.

“It's fucking freezing out here,” said Rob, a redheaded undergraduate with a long Roman nose. His ears were almost perfectly perpendicular to his head. “I'm going in.”

Blake had already pushed through the door. The interior of the GT was supposed to look like a Mexican cantina: everything was made of rough unfinished wood, and there were paintings of cactuses on the walls and neon Corona and Dos Equis signs hanging in the windows. About half the tables were full, and there was a noisy crowd around the bar. They sat down in a booth. Peters collected everybody's coats and piled them up in an empty seat.

“Your coat, sir?” he said, turning to Hollis.

“Be careful. There's a check in the inside pocket.”

“Is there?” said Peters. “Let me guess—Mom's life insurance paid off.”

“I liquidated my last stocks today,” Hollis said. “My grandmother gave them to me when I was born. It was kind of depressing, actually—kind of like that scene in
Risky Business,
when Tom Cruise cashes all those bonds to pay for a call girl.”

“You slept with a call girl?” said Rob.

“What'd you make?” said Blake.

“Not very much. Six or seven hundred. I only had a few shares left.”

A tired-looking waiter came up to the table, and they ordered a round of drinks.

“Wait,” Peters said, when the waiter was gone. “Wait. That can't possibly be true. You hardly even got up today.”

“So? Okay, I went yesterday.”

“So why didn't you just say you went yesterday?”

“I don't know,” Hollis said. “It just seemed simpler.”

“Has it ever occurred to you that you're a compulsive liar, Hollis?”

“What's wrong with lying?” Hollis said. “A lie is a blow to the tyranny of fact.”

“Oh, that's brilliant,” said Basil. “A lie is—? What did you just say?”

Daylight often found him in the blackest of moods. But when night fell and the wine flowed freely, none could match his flashing wit and merry gibes.

The drinks arrived on a wet plastic tray. When everyone had claimed one they lifted them silently and drank. No one said anything for a minute or two, and Rob stared in the direction of the door, toying absently with his glass.

“Isn't that one of those Linstead girls?” he said.

They all turned to look. A pair of women had just walked in; one was talking to the host and taking off her coat. The other waited for her, standing gracefully on one leg with the other leg cocked up behind her. As they watched she rummaged in her purse, took out a scrunchie, and put her long blond hair through it.

“It's Fay,” said Basil. “It's not like they're twins, you know. Kay's a lot shorter.”

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