The Duration Page 21

  “You remember the way?” I asked.

  “Shit yeah,” Chick said. “Back of my hand.”

  I went over the plan. Give me an hour. Come through the woods. At eight I’ll be in the tub room. I’ll open one of the windows. You’ll come in, commune with the rhino spirit, then leave. Eyes only. We meet back here and crash at the Horse Head.

  The snow was coming down hard, thick flakes falling like stars, and I gave Chick my Head-Connect sweatshirt to wear under his thin black coat. He pulled the hood up. The woods were quiet, the snow starting to dampen everything. I looked around the old neighborhood. I imagined us in our homes, little kids with the world ahead of us, sitting around the dining room table, staring at our broccoli, our mothers staring at us.

  “Remember Mrs. Dangle?” I asked, looking at the little cottage next to the space where Chick’s house used to be. “Remember how she’d yell at us on Halloween?”

  Chick laughed a little.

  “She hit me with a wooden spoon once, right on my knuckles.”

  “Her grandson threw a rock at me once,” I said. “Because I called him a granddangle.”

  “I remember that. I thought it was because you called him Nussbaum.”

  “That was his name,” I said.

  “Yeah, but you called him Nussbaum Nussbaum. That’s when he picked up the rock.”

  He was right. I’d forgotten that, and still couldn’t remember why I’d done it in the first place, except that the kid was a year older than us and a jackass.

  Chick got out of the Escalade. He looked down the trail, a white path through the woods. Augustus Beecher’s woods. His white hood blended with the snowfall and it almost looked like a headless jacket standing in the trees. Then he turned back around and reached out to give me a fist bump.

  “One hour,” he said. “Stay low. Don’t stop moving.”

  He smiled his big smile. His eyes were bright. It just made me more nervous.

  “You got to stay with me on this, right?” I said, giving him my serious look. “I’m putting my neck out for you.”

  “Float like a bumblebee,” he said, winking at me. “Sting like a . . . something.”

  Then he jogged off down the path, through the trees, through the snow, and vanished.

  I waited for a few minutes, staring into the whiteness where he’d been, and then drove back down Scrimshaw, out onto Bramble, around the 4 miles to the main entrance to Fleur-de-Lys.

  Security Pete waved me down.

  “No sign of him, Mr. Johansson,” he said.

  I projected blankness.

  “Who?”

  “Your friend, the trespasser.”

  Security Pete was smiling in a way that seemed to convey both bemusement and condescension, as though I were a child who’d asked him to keep an eye out for the Easter Bunny. They had protocols. Easter Bunny wasn’t getting through. Nothing like that could ever happen here.

  Fuck these guys.

  “Well,” I said. “I’m sure he’ll be along presently.”

  I smiled at him to let him know I was joking.

  He gave me a little faux salute and wanded my truck with his flashlight, and then I was through. I rolled up slowly, the black pines and barren hardwoods dark and forbidding. They seemed closer than they’d been before, like they were encroaching. Maybe it was the snow. It was falling heavily now. Chickie was out there somewhere, slip-crunching his way through the Magic Meadow, maybe, or maybe already inside the Head-Connect perimeter.

  The valet guys took the truck away before it occurred to me to ask them to keep it close, maybe even keep it running, in case we needed to make a getaway. They seemed oblivious, but studiously so? Were they already onto us? Were there microphones in their ears, two-ways in their fleece cuffs? I consoled myself with the thought that there were lengths to which we simply couldn’t go. Chick was already taking a ridiculous risk, a risk that I was enabling, and if he got caught he’d be looking at a very angry judge. And I’d be looking at a very angry Ava Winston, if indeed I got the chance to look at her again.

  The plan. Show him the horn, send him on his way, involve some third parties, get on with our lives.

  It might work.

  It was never going to work.

  It was never going to work and I was an idiot for believing otherwise. All that rah-rah stuff, all the team building, the buying in. We were fucked. I should walk back down the drive, escort Security Pete to the tub room, and turn us both in. Chick would get some time in some facility, maybe kick his bad habits. I could go back to my life. It would almost be an act of charity. I should do that. I should.

  But nope.

  I walked into the lobby. It was late and Ava Winston was not at her desk. I checked my watch. Half an hour until rendezvous.

  “Welcome back, Mr. Johansson,” said a voice behind me. I turned. It was Tudd, red-cheeked and bright-eyed. He clapped me on the back. “No hike this evening due to snow. But we can swim.”

  That sounded great.

  “Maybe,” I said. “I need to check my schedule.”

  Tudd nodded in a way that managed to express both deference and disapproval.

  “We will hope to see you,” he said, but he didn’t walk away. He just sort of stood there.

  “Okay then,” I said. “I’ll go check.”

  Tudd was making me even more nervous. I left him and walked down the hall toward the guest rooms. In Jimmer’s room, I changed out of my winter coat and into less conspicuous attire. I’d given Chick my sweatshirt but still had the pants, roomy and warm. I put Jimmer’s sweatshirt on, he’d left it there, of course. I slipped my feet into the pair of sneakers housekeeping kept placing in the closets. Jimmer’s sweatshirt was tight, but maybe not as tight as it would’ve been last week? Because I was levelling up. Or had been, before this bad, bad decision.

  I checked the hallway and headed off toward the spa.

  The long corridor empty. The gymnasium and yoga studios full and distracted. The spa attendants with the lotus flowers and towel baskets stood behind desks, demure and accommodating. The caldaria, who knows? Steams were thick. I caught vague floral and earthen smells, something southwestern maybe. Couldn’t see inside. I walked down the back corridor to the tub room, lit like a Turkish cistern, the twin whirlpools roiling like Scylla and Charybdis, the dip pool a green grave. Aqueous shadows rolled on the ceiling. The egret, forever sharp-eyed. The horn shining like an Elvish blade in a Tolkien book. Elvish LaBeau.

  Man, we’re all over the place.

  Ava Winston in her guest services uniform was standing at the windows, pointing out to three women in plush robes how the back lawns rolled down to a distant glen that had once stabled the horses. She turned when I walked in and, when she saw me, the look on her face—surprise, a secret thrill—broke my heart for the second time since noon.

  “Pete . . . Mr. Johansson,” she said, a smile spreading beyond her control. “So nice to have you back.”

  Fuckety fuck.

  The three women—brass blond, in their fifties but toned, wearing rocks that would just tear their hands up at yoga, I could tell them that—looked at me with the conspiratorial warmth of the wealthy. We’re all strangers wearing bathrobes, the look said, but it’s okay because that’s just how you roll when you’re this goddamn rich.

  “Isn’t this wonderful?” the tallest of the three said, her face a Picasso, gesturing with a thin hand around the tub room.

  I looked at Ava.

  “It sure is,” I said, and I felt like she knew what I was trying to say because she sort of blushed.

  “Here for a soak, Mr. Johansson?” she said when she’d recovered. “Or are you braving the frigid depths?”

  I scanned the curved bank of windows behind them, but couldn’t see anything.

  “Uh, not sure,” I said. “That cold dip looks a little intimidating.”

  “I bet all the men say that,” said the Picasso, and her companions laughed.

  Ava looked at her quickly
.

  “Actually, it’s wonderful for your circulation, and many people find it remarkably invigorating after a soak in one of the baths.” She looked at me. “You should try it. Be brave.”

  I nodded, smiled.

  “We’ll see,” I said. Then I gave the Picasso and her companions a sideways look. “The temptation is strong.”

  I laughed and the ladies laughed with me. They were eating it up. We stood there for a moment, engaged in about three different mental communications at once, and then Ava said, “Okay. So let’s continue to the studios.”

  The three women nodded at me as Ava led them toward the hallway to resume their tour of the facilities. On the way past, the Picasso touched my arm.

  “Do let us know how it is,” she said.

  I patted her on the hand.

  “You’ll be the first,” I said, giving her the full Handsome. It was the role I was born to play.

  The ladies laughed again, our little charm theater an unexpected perk of the tour, and headed on toward the studios. Ava Winston followed them. She was beaming. Because I still got it.

  “Enjoy your soak, Mr. Johansson,” she said, flashing me an unprofessional smile as she moved around the corner, and I swear to you she was nearly sashaying. “I’ll catch you later.”

  I gave them a few minutes, paced, tried to look idle and innocent lest there were cameras behind mirrors, other guests still submerged. I didn’t see any, but then you wouldn’t, would you? I peered at the egret, a proud bird doomed to spend its afterlife down here in the tub room, inspecting a parade of stretch marks and keratoses. Or was it a heron? Heron, egret. What was the difference? Poor bird probably dealt with that its whole life, and now even in the Hereafter. I egret to inform you that I am a heron.

  Nah, it was an egret, I decided. Herons were blue.

  I had a sudden idea of what could happen next, an idea that I could unloose the horn from its marble base, stash it in the waistband of my sweatpants, like a sword or something, and saunter right out through the lobby of Head-Connect. Draw Ava aside and give her the opportunity to say, “Is that a rhino horn in your sweatpants or are you just happy to see me?” Even if she didn’t actually say it. Just give her the opportunity. She’d get it. She’d smile and her eyes would sparkle and that’d be something. Then I’d explain everything to her, turn the thing in and let the proper authorities handle it.

  That would be a good outcome. I could look at Chickie and shrug.

  I picked up the marble base.

  The horn felt solid and smooth. Someone had used a laminate on it, and it shone in the lamps. It was lighter than I expected, like a piece of driftwood. I put one hand on the inside curve at the bottom and the other along the base and rattled it slightly. It was affixed with a screw. When I turned it, it began coming loose, and before I could really think about what I was doing, I was holding it in my hands. Homoerotic as shit, for sure, but I was relatively secure in my sexuality. And the thing was wicked.

  I heard a tap on the windows.

  I threw a towel over the horn. Put it in the crease of one of the Adirondack chairs along the wall. Meandered over to the hallway entrance and peered down in each direction. Nobody there.

  The tapping became more insistent.

  I slow-strolled to the windows, head on a swivel. When I was a few feet away, I broke into a trot.

  Chick was barely visible against the glare from the interior lights. I had to lean up to the edge of the glass and cup my hands around my eyes to see him, and then he was right there, inches away. He’d shed his dark windbreaker and had the hood of my Head-Connect sweatshirt pulled up against the snow. One hand was buried in the sweatshirt’s kangaroo pouch, and with the other he was giving me a vigorous thumbs-up. I flashed him one back. I motioned for him to wait, pointed behind me, went to the chair where the horn lay swaddled, picked it up, and brought it to the window. The black tip peeked out like a newborn.

  I watched Chickie’s eyes settle on it, focus, widen.

  That sort of felt like maybe it should have been enough, Chick peering through the fancy glass, seeing what he came to see, seeing that it was real. Beyond that, if this little excursion went any further, there were about ten ways for it to end and nine of them were bad.

  But who are we kidding? He was coming in, and I was letting him.

  I met him at one set of the French doors that opened onto the back lawn. They were dead-bolted. I put the horn down, twisted the lock counterclockwise. The doors wouldn’t budge. Chick pointed up to the top of the door frame, where, lo and behold, there was an additional bolt. I slid the brass knob down, and then reached to the floor to free the identical lock there. These were nice doors. Summer doors. They had faux-antique lattices but you could tell that the glass was a straight-up twenty-first-century thermal shield, double-layered, and that the insulation was tight. When I tugged on the handles, they swung open like an airlock. In warmer weather, Head-Connectors would walk out through these doors onto the manicured lawns beyond. They’d breathe deeply, their skin pink and tender from a soak, their muscles tingling, alive, present, the rolling lawn as new a world as they might hope, at that point, to be offered.

  But it was winter, and the doors opened with a gust and a confetti of snow.

  Chick dragged himself in and I pushed the doors closed behind him.

  “Been out there for half an hour,” he said, his lips blue and quivering. “I thought they’d never leave.”

  I started to help dust him off, stopped, and then started again. He was an icicle.

  “Shhh,” I whispered.

  I pushed him toward one of the two corners of the room, where the wide bay met the flat interior walls. He kicked off his boots. He wasn’t wearing any socks.

  “Dude,” I said.

  He pointed to his feet.

  “Can’t feel them.”

  “Why aren’t you wearing socks?”

  He just shrugged. I gestured to the hot tubs. He plodded over, like a man walking on blocks, and before I could stop him, stepped into the cold dip pool.

  “Shee-zus!” he said, hopping back out.

  I tried not to laugh. Wasn’t like I liked seeing him in pain. Wasn’t even funny. It was just that my nerves were tight and that cold dip pool scared me.

  “Thought you couldn’t feel them.”

  He hopped over to one of the whirlpools and stepped into it up to his knees. His arms were spread out, the fear on his face replaced with relief.

  “Ahhh,” he said.

  His whole body seemed to shiver.

  “Any time now,” I said, and went to check the hallways again. They were empty.

  He was sitting on the edge of the hot tub now, dipping his raw hands in and squeezing them into fists.

  “Where’s it at?” he said.

  I brought the horn over. He reached up for it.

  “Eyes only,” I said. “Right?”

  Chick stood up slowly, lifting his pink feet tenderly out of the water. His eyes looked watery. He dried his hands on his sweatshirt.

  “Come on,” he said. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

  So I handed it to him.

  He unwrapped it.

  I tried to be still. It wasn’t easy. My adrenaline was flowing, every muscle in my body saying hurry up, let’s go, there’s not much time, but trying really hard to let the moment play itself out. The success of the whole endeavor seemed to depend on not rushing it.

  Chick just stood quietly, holding the horn. Looking at it. Then he started giggling.

  “Right?” he said. “Right?”

  I couldn’t help myself.

  “I know,” I said. “Shit is nuts.”

  He reached his free hand out. I hooked him up with the five. For a second we’d won.

  Then we heard footsteps up the hallway that led to the women’s lockers. We both looked up.

  “Shit,” I hissed at Chick.

  He looked at the hall, looked at me, his eyes went comically wide. We were
about to be caught, and nothing could have delighted him more.

  “Put it back,” I said, and tried to mean it. But he just stood there. His mouth formed an O.

  I went to him and grabbed the horn, hustled it over to the alcove, and gave it a couple quick turns. It was listing, but we could deal with that later. I pointed at him, and then at the door, a stern point that I was planning on employing as a parent.

  “Shoes,” I said. “Hide.”

  He nodded obediently and hustled over to slip his boots over his still-wet toes. Then he pointed at the horn and raised his shoulders.

  “Do not,” I said.

  He sort of feinted toward the horn, still smiling. Like, I’m not doing this, but I’m doing it.

  “Nobody’ll know,” he said.

  “Guy,” I said, and even as I said it I felt like screaming, because the stakes were so fucking high. How could he not see how high they were? “I am not joking.”

  He looked back at me, grinning that stupid grin. Then something else crept into his look, and it was hard not to see an apology there, an apology I pretended I didn’t understand. He looked at the horn, and then at the French doors, then again at me. And I could’ve grabbed him, taken him down. I had him by probably eighty pounds and I hadn’t been sleeping on a cot. But I didn’t.

  The noise in the hall was getting closer. I looked at him. I knew exactly what was going to happen.

  “Guy,” I said again, raising a warning finger. “Please.”

  Chick smiled at me, and now there was nothing in the smile but him. All that time, gone in a blink.

  “You know I love you, right?” Chick said.

  And I did. And that was that.

  Anyway, there was really no place to hide.

  I stepped into the hallway.

  “Hi,” said Ava.

  She was alone, still only halfway to the baths, walking back from depositing the biddies in the salon. She looked at me. I was still wearing the sweats and sneakers. “Umm, not going in?”

  “Ava,” I said as she got closer. I tried to smile but it felt weird and I can’t imagine how it looked.

  She glanced back down the hallway and put her hand on my arm. We stood together for a moment. I thought about trying to kiss her again, both because I wanted to and also, mainly, if the truth be told, as a distraction, but that seemed too cynical even for my playbook.