The Duration (32 page)

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.

She continued around the corner to the tub room and looked around. I waited in the hallway, contemplating a dash.

“Why's it so cold in here?” she said.

I walked after her.

She stood in the empty room, rubbing her arms. She walked over to look at the windows, still all locked. She stopped at the doors I'd opened earlier and stared at a wet spot on the floor, where some dogged snow was still melting.

“I, uh, opened those,” I said, following her eyes to the doors.

The absence of suspicion in the look she gave me. Man, nobody should have to go through that.

I pressed on.

“Just needed some air,” I said. “I, uh, think the quinoa didn't agree with me.”

Her eyes brightened and she grinned a little bit and said “Trouble in Marrakesh?” and for an instant I could see what could have been a future of comfort between us, the whole thing, quips and romps and rolls and courtship and then rolling right through the head colds and bad breath of domesticity, the times when we weren't at our best but it was okay, the tykes, the mortgage, the eventual orphaning and bleeding and wizening of age. I could see it all play out, rolling forward into the invisible future like a carpet in a cloudless sky. I thought to myself I could marry this girl. But then she looked past me, behind me, to the niche in the wall that I already knew was bare, and her bright eyes widened and then hardened, and as fast as I saw that particular dream, I saw just as clearly the dying of it. And it was almost a relief.

“What the . . . ” she said, and blew past me on her titanium calves, to the wall, to the alcove, where the marble base for the horn now stood empty and upturned, the affixing screw in its center snapped off. I didn't even need to turn around to know it.

I was going to say something, but there wasn't much point, so I just stood there in that stupid room in those stupid plush sweats and those stupid sneakers as she looked around again. Now she regarded it professionally, unburdened of tenderness, taking in the French doors, the puddle, my dry hair, my false grin. What I would have said, if asked, if it would have made any difference, was something like, “Who's gonna help this kid but me?”

Which, you know, that's it in a nutshell.

Ava looked at me, and for a second her face crumbled like when your parents tell you that they're separating, that irredeemable moment, but then she pulled it together and cleared her throat and unhooked the walkie-talkie from her belt.

“Get out of here,” she said.

I should have kissed her when I had the chance.

Ava's broadcast, which I heard as I headed up the hallway, past the steam rooms and through the spa, set several things in motion. A number of the helpers, including Tudd, materialized in the spa. Three of them escorted me to a side office. Arvindo Blanc floated down the sloped path from the main house wearing something that looked like a GORE-TEX kimono. He stopped me and said “Brother son, moon and stars,” and then handed me off to the heretofore unseen head of security, a decidedly unhealthy-looking troll named Crevis, who asked me to wait in a windowless room behind the reception desk while he called the police. A few guests milled in the lobby, apparently attracted by sudden vibes of activity more than by the sound of any alarm, of which there was none. Walking with Crevis, who stood slightly behind me, close enough to grab my arm but otherwise apart, I spied the mother-daughter duo, the mother looking worried, the daughter looking interested. I spied the minor movie star, back from wherever, who gave me a nod. I did not spy Ava.

“What's your name again?” asked Crevis.

“They call me Handsome,” I said.

The room where I waited was maybe one of the only places at Head-Connect that was not aesthetically soothing. It was more of a sensory-deprivation chamber. There was a folding card table, one of those metal ones, and a corresponding folding chair. There was a trashcan in the corner with a single Dunkin' Donuts coffee cup inside. Against one wall was a worn leather couch. On the opposite wall, someone had hung a poster for Head-Connect Nevada, which looked like a Quonset hut on Mars. Nobody asked me if I wanted water or ginseng or anything. Nobody came at all. I just sat there in Jimmer's too-small sweatshirt, which I was growing to hate, so I took it off and threw it in the corner.

I didn't even mind what Chick had done, not too much. At least it was done, and what's done is done, finally. It was hard to even feel surprised. I'm sure he'd weighed the consequences beforehand, maybe. Maybe he really believed nobody would connect us, and maybe they wouldn't have if it hadn't been Ava who came in. At least not right away. It probably would have taken some time, and by then we'd have figured something out. That's probably what he thought.

Or maybe he just saw one shot at this thing he felt he needed to do and figured I'd understand, which, sitting there, I sort of did. I mean, I'd given it to him.

I also felt no compulsion to protect him anymore, something else I'm sure he'd anticipated.

There was a knock on the door, like at the doctor's office, and then Crevis came in with Chief Grevantz.

We nodded to each other, the way you do.

“What's going on?” Crevis said, sitting on the couch.

Chief Grevantz stood across from my chair, arms folded, archetypically authoritative. He was wearing a great winterish cop coat, sort of a variation on the jackets we'd get in high school when we'd win our division, fleece lined and shiny sleeves. His hat had snow on the brim.

I cleared my throat.

“Well, see,” I said. “There was once this rhino.”

I told them most of the story, the shorter version. I tried to make it personal for Grevantz, a nod to his younger self's police work and the kindness of his predecessor. I left out the part about the oxycodone, and left Jimmer and Unsie out of it. Of course, I didn't mention my brief interlude with Ava Winston, the resurrection of which, with time and reparations and such, I still hoped was possible. I didn't minimize my own role, but I did present myself in as sympathetic a way as I could manage, at one point emphasizing my own frustration with an arm-sweep from T-shirt to sneaker and a nod at “that stupid sweatshirt.” This is not my uniform, I wanted to say. This is a costume I've been compelled by unseen forces to wear.

And I ended with a flourish.

“But I know where he's going,” I said, raising my arms and smiling triumphantly.