The Duration Read online

  Tudd asked me how long I was staying at Head-Connect. I said the weekend. He seemed concerned.

  “You could use a month,” he said. “At least.”

  “People stay here for a month?”

  He nodded.

  “Some people live here. We have residents.”

  I must have looked skeptical, because then he said, “It’s also a state of mind.”

  Tudd walked me through the gym, open floor plan, all the resistance machines, gleaming chrome and padded benches. A couple of dozen people were in there, moving from machine to machine, some guests but some staff too, differentiated by how well their workout clothes fit and how casually they approached the machinery. I wanted to find a bench press, do some Paleolithic grunting.

  “No free weights,” Tudd said. “We promote a holistic approach. Resistance from within, overcome from within.”

  “But what if I don’t put up much resistance?” I asked.

  Tudd looked me over.

  “You are putting up a lot of resistance already, Mr. Johansson.”

  I wasn’t sure if that was a slam or a come-on or some sort of spa wisdom, so I just rolled with it.

  Tudd took me through twelve machines, and on each one I felt like I could have tripled the resistance he was recommending, and at the end of the twelve I could barely remember my name.

  “So this will be your routine for the week,” Tudd said. “Once in the morning, once in the afternoon, with aerobics and Bikram yoga and meditation in the middle.”

  I was clutching at a cup of water.

  “That is from a spring in Vermont,” Tudd said. “They also make our cheese. And our outdoor attire.”

  “Who does?” I asked.

  “Vermont,” he said.

  He walked me over to the services desk and handed me off to a small, attractive African-American woman.

  “He should have the salt rub,” Tudd said, and the African-American woman nodded and pecked at a tablet.

  “And here is your personalized menu,” Tudd said, handing me a piece of paper folded into thirds. My hands were sweaty and shaking.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Tudd said, taking the paper back. “I’ve uploaded it already. You can find it on any of our monitors, under guest services. Have a good massage and I will check back with you in a bit.”

  He clapped me on the shoulder. His hand felt like wood.

  “Good Welcoming.”

  I nodded. I wasn’t sure if we were supposed to be pals now. Hard to be pals with a guy who has just kneaded your liver.

  I was sort of looking forward to the massage, because I was sore as shit, but also because, you know, all bets are off with a massage, right? Probably not, but I always wondered about that. Then the pretty African-American woman passed me off to a rash-looking and substantially older Italian man named Fulvio who had me lie down naked on hot wood slats while he played trance music and spread this sticky mix of salt, nettles, and Vaseline all over me. He had hands like pliers.

  “Do you have a cat?” Fulvio asked me as he ground the salt-nettle mix into my upper thighs.

  I said no.

  “A salt rub is like being licked head to toe by a giant cat,” he said. “Like a panther. A panther bath.”

  I stayed silent. I was pretty sure he was breaching protocol.

  Fulvio rubbed and flexed and squeezed me so hard that I felt like a baseball glove. He bundled my junk up into a towel and shoved it brusquely away while working on my hip sockets. He put really hot rocks on my spine and the backs of my knees. I wanted to say something, or cry, but you can’t, can you? It felt like that would be surrendering. Plus, Fulvio kept saying, “Is good, no?” and once I got into the habit of agreeing I couldn’t stop. After an hour, a sponge bath, and several realigned vertebrae, he helped me up from the table. I felt woozy.

  “Now,” he said. “Eucalyptus steam and plenty of water today. We removed a great number of toxins from your system.”

  He sort of hugged me into a standing position and took me by the arm. I felt like I might collapse. What if the toxins were the only thing holding me together?

  Fulvio gave me a thick white robe and led me through a short hallway to the showers.

  The men’s clubhouse was lined with gleaming oak lockers and mirrored vanities. A few other guests were in there, in various stages of undress, ruddy cheeks and limp appendages, but still seemingly more comfortable with their bodies than I was. I wondered how long it’d been since their Welcoming. Elixirs crowded the sinks, oils and hair creams and mouthwash. I washed my mouth out with a green liquid that tasted like parsley. I stripped down to a towel and put my robe and sweat clothes into an open locker. I showered with more oatmeal scrub. I checked my eyes—were they less bloodshot? Was my skin more resilient? Maybe.

  The caldaria were accessible via a tiled corridor down a short flight of stairs at the back of the showers, and walking through it I got the sense that I was underground, that perhaps the corridor linked the new Head-Connect wings with the older Fleur-de-Lys mansion. I climbed up an equal number of steps at the end of the corridor and emerged in a small hallway with doors on either side. The doors were glass and heavy and behind them nothing was visible but steam. Each one had a description written on a slate by the entrance. Peering in, I sensed that there were other people around. Hard to see, but I could feel them, sort of. Steam rooms made me a little uneasy. You could never be sure what was going on in them. When I got to the entrance to the eucalyptus room, I grabbed another towel and kept walking.

  The hallway bent around to the left, and after about 10 yards I passed a slate advising that I was now in a mixed-gender area and should be clothed accordingly. The hall merged into a room about half the size of a gymnasium, a wide oval with windows that curved out onto the back lawn of Fleur-de-Lys, the apple orchards and old dirt roads that bisected the woods. The effect was of a ballroom, or the bridge of a starship. Along the edges of the room were statues, eunuchs and satyrs and nymphs and stuff, probably scavenged from the woods when Head-Connect moved in. The lighting was subdued, and in the center of the room were two bubbling whirlpools, each around 12 feet across. Between them was a rectangular pool, grave-like in size, which was so cold that when I dipped my toe in I almost squealed. The lights from these three pools played around on the low ceiling of the room, sliding and resolving, as if that were the surface and the room itself was underwater.

  My towels were warm and soft, and I sat on a bench near the windows for a moment. I was alone. There was no sound except for the bubbling of the pools. The room felt tranquil, almost sacred, the innermost boiler of the whole enterprise, powering the lights and ovens and lesser cores of the system with a steady flow of steam. Through the bank of windows, I could see a string of cross-country skiers vanish on the thin powder into the distant tree line. An arrow of geese, silent to me, flew north beneath the clouds. It would be nice to stay here for a year, I thought, get really healthy, impress Ava. Best Tudd in some competition. Go into that cold dip pool. Replace all my toxins with wheatgrass or mother’s milk. I just had to invent something that everyone in the world would buy.

  I stood up to return to the lockers, slightly ashamed to have been gifted with such luxury and to want more of it. I commiserated with a bust of Apollo and turned back toward the passageway.

  And there, in a wall alcove by the side of the corridor, was the horn of the great beast Guy Van Nest had shot in the woods.

  It stood point up, a polished black spike, fastened to a marble base and lit from above. I looked around the bath room. There were other alcoves, with other displays—a cricket bat, a timepiece, a taxidermy egret by the far wall. At least I hoped it was taxidermy. Egrets were sneaky fuckers. None of them had labels, but I had no doubt that this was the horn from the safe, the horn of the rhino. You ever catch a bat in your house, and it looks exactly like a bat? Like, the moment you see it, you know that you have always known just what a bat would look like? The horn was that way. There was no m
istaking. It looked brutal, potent, prehistoric. My testosterone rose a couple of clicks just looking at it.

  Guy Van Nest, I thought. Damn, kid.

  The Head-Connect dining room was in the main building, in a high-ceilinged wing opposite where we’d done our Welcoming. There were only eight tables, each big enough to seat four people, and guests dined in forty-five minute shifts. The dining room staff, which was dressed in a sort of elegant casual, circled solicitously through the area. The clattering from the open kitchen was so rhythmic that it might have been recorded.

  I rushed in during the 11:30 seating. My own seating was not for another twenty minutes, but I had to tell Jimmer what I’d seen. The dining room was nearly empty. A couple of silverbacks in gray sweatsuits sat in the corner eating wedges of papaya like corn on the cob. They looked like producers. A large woman was consulting what might’ve been a treaty. Jimmer was lingering at a small four-top across the room with Vishy Shetty and her assistant. When I tried to cross to him, a Head-Connect staff member stepped up to thwart me.

  “Mr. Johansson, sir,” she said, another helper of indeterminate age and indeterminate motive. “We aren’t expecting you yet. Sustenance is highly individualized, and the kitchen has not prepped for you. Can I offer you a smoothie while you wait?”

  I shrugged her off.

  “Not eating.” I said. “Just here to talk.”

  She looked momentarily taken aback, as if I were there to talk to her. Jimmer turned in his seat as I crossed, and the helper took the opportunity to vanish.

  “My man,” he said, getting up to meet me with a slap and a half-hug. “Sit. Sup.”

  He gestured to the table where Vishy Shetty and her assistant smiled high-caliber smiles. Vishy Shetty had enormous sunglasses propped on her hair and was spearing a blueberry in a fruit cup, eating daintily, almost guiltily. Her assistant palmed an iPhone.

  “This is Miriam and her sister Joanne. They’re from Sydney,” he said. “Not really, but that’s the cover we’ve all agreed to acknowledge. Cool?”

  I shrugged. Neither Vishy Shetty nor her assistant acknowledged it.

  “Hey,” I said to Jimmer. “Can I speak with you for a minute?”

  Jimmer sat back down.

  “Of course,” he said. “Sup?”

  He smiled at his little wordplay.

  “Privately, I mean.” I looked at Vishy Shetty and her assistant. “No offense.”

  Their eyes flickered for an instant, in a way that suggested it would be nearly impossible for me to offend them. They existed beyond a membrane. Vishy Shetty’s eyes were so big that she was hard to look at. You know how it is with really beautiful women, like they’re so beautiful that when you look at them, you can’t think straight? Like that. I couldn’t look at Vishy Shetty, and I could barely look at her assistant.

  Jimmer seemed immune. Maybe he was beyond the membrane as well.

  “Sure,” he said. “Let me just finish my espresso here, and this lovely piece of hake.”

  He moved his fork like a wand over a flaky filet and set it aside. The filet was untouched. The espresso he finished.

  “Delicious,” he said.

  “How’d you get that?” I asked, momentarily distracted by the caffeine. “Dude said there was no coffee.”

  Jimmer looked over the room.

  “I’m running this bitch. That’s my operating agreement.”

  He stood up.

  “They just try and discourage you from asking. Pardon me, ladies,” he said, winking to Vishy Shetty and her assistant. “I’ll see you later today, I hope.”

  Vishy Shetty flashed what appeared to be a genuine smile, brief and demure. Her assistant refocused on the iPhone.

  “Do you know who that is?” Jimmer asked when we were out of earshot.

  I nodded, even though at that point I didn’t really know. She was somebody. That much was clear.

  “Have you seen those pics?”

  On that one, I shook my head no. We stepped outside of the main house and into the cold midday sun. The sky looked like snow.

  “Listen, Jimmer,” I said, checking the immediate vicinity for helpers. We were clear. “You know what’s going on with Chick, right? Unsie told you?”

  Jimmer stamped at the pea-stoned drive and put his sunglasses on.

  “A little. Not much, actually.”

  “You know about the rhino, though, right? That’s why we’re here?”

  Jimmer stopped stamping and looked up at me. He smiled.

  “Well, that’s why you’re here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What do you mean, ‘what do you mean’?” Jimmer said, pointing with his chin. “Look, look at this luxurious place. Look at these beautiful people around us. Look, behind those doors are some of the finest spa services available to mankind.”

  “The rhino, Jimmer. He’s been searching for it since forever.”

  Jimmer turned back to me and took his sunglasses off. He seemed embarrassed to be dealing with this conversation, to be dipping back into the muck.

  “The rhino,” he snorted. “Please. I get that there is this quest, which I might find ridiculous. I love the guy, love him to death. But I don’t, like, own a rhino farm yet. I can’t deliver whatever it is he’s chasing. And what do you think would happen if I could?”

  He bent at the waist and stamped his feet, then straightened up again.

  “I don’t think I have the power to change whatever path he’s on. I can support him and invite him to join me on my path. I can encourage him to make good choices. I can also walk away. That’s it. Those are the limits of my powers.”

  He paused.

  “Yours too, you know.”

  “But then what did you come all this way for, if you’re not here to help him?”

  “Who says I came to help him, Pete?” he said, a slight inflection on "him."

  Now it was my turn to be embarrassed, if I was reading him right. I assumed I was.

  “Well, look, I appreciate that. I appreciate that you came here to help me out. I’m doing okay, and the best way that you can help me is to help me help Chick.”

  Jimmer looked skeptical.

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s just play that out. I mean, we’re already here, and as you correctly noted, that’s not accidental. You look around, you do your little investigation, and then what?”

  I accepted the condescension as the price of his time. Condescension I could handle. Besides, I had something to show him.

  “Now we’re getting somewhere,” I said, heading toward the spa. “First, come with me.”

  “She’s pretty, right?” Jimmer said as we semi-snuck back down the steam room corridor to the baths.

  “Who?”

  “Vishy Shetty.”

  “Uh, pretty isn’t the word I’d use.”

  Looking at Vishy Shetty was like looking at the sun, she was so pretty.

  “Smart too. She’s made some bad choices, though,” said Jimmer. “I think she’s wounded.”

  “Oh, I see,” I said. “You’ll help her, but you won’t help me?”

  “You’re not that pretty,” he said.

  We were in the baths. They were empty. Bubble shadows flickered on the white ceiling. Outside, a snow flurry was falling. I maneuvered Jimmer so that his back was to the rhino horn, sight lines clear, the alcove free from shadows. Optics were critical.

  “Stop,” I said. “Before you get too far along on this little Bollywood escapade, look at that.”

  I pointed behind him.

  Jimmer turned, focused, stared. Crossed the baths and stood before it. The thing was black as coffee, part weapon and part crown.

  “Wow,” he said after a minute. “You win. That’s badass.”

  “I know, right?” I said. “That’s what he’s after.”

  Jimmer looked appraisingly at it.

  “Well, he’s not going to get it.”

  I was quiet. That sounded a little more definitive a little more q
uickly than I had been prepared for him to be.

  “Any ideas?” I asked.

  “Ideas?”

  “Yeah. I mean, I never even thought this thing existed. Chick was sure, though. He thought it was in the Vice Safe, but I guess they moved it down here.”

  “Look,” Jimmer said. “Do you know how much this thing is worth?”

  I shrugged. Jimmer ran the back side of the nail of his pointer finger from the horn’s base to the tip of its spike.

  “It’s worth a shitload. Like mid-six figures shitload.”

  “Seriously?” I said. “Thing’s a hundred years old.”

  “Yeah, that probably makes it more valuable. If Chickie screws around with this thing, he won’t be looking at probation. You’re talking grand larceny. I mean, there’s the historical angle, the preservationist stuff, and whatever that’s worth. But if Head-Connect is smart, they’re valuing this thing by the gram.”

  I frowned.

  “What do you mean?”

  “For insurance purposes. Dudes believe these horns have magical properties. That’s why the poaching is so bad. They think they can cure illness, restore your virility, that sort of stuff. They grind the things up and pop them like Alka-Seltzer.”

  Guy Van Nest, Gable’s first holistic healer. Probably also explained why Head-Connect was fetishizing it down by the baths. At these prices, a little voodoo couldn’t hurt.

  “Goddamn, man,” I said. “What are we going to tell Chickie?”

  Jimmer snorted at me.

  “Nice try,” he said. “Look, you didn’t think this thing existed, right?”

  I nodded.

  “So why not just let it continue to . . . not . . . exist?”

  “You mean lie to him?”

  Jimmer grimaced like I was a particularly disappointing child.

  “You know what will happen. You can say you checked the safe and it was empty. Leave it at that. Maybe then he can let go of it, get himself straight.”

  We heard voices coming down the corridor from the steam rooms. The corporate types, exploring from the sound of it. I folded my arms and blew through my cheeks. Jimmer walked over to me.