them. They lost compassion for the world outside, and for each other, too.
By the final generation, both building and occupants had gone mad. Like Schermerhorn before them, the tenants, and even the building itself, began to dream. This time, of doors.
They drew pictures, they sketched. They became obsessed. The first tenant used his deceased wife’s bones. The door proved a failure, and crashed soon after opening, but in that brief time, through the cracks, he saw a terrible beauty. He loved the black-eyed thing that had peered back at him, because he recognized himself in it. The Breviary recognized what waited on the other side of that door, too, and felt the first pangs of hope it had ever known: beyond that door was home.
Soon all the tenants tried and failed; and then came Clara DeLea, who understood that the price of its opening was blood. She succeeded better than the rest, but in the end, her door was not sound enough to hold and collapsed before anything could climb through. In its fury, The Breviary dragged her back to her claw-foot tub and then shrank inside of her, so that she was forced to see the wickedness she’d done to her children, unmoving as stillborns. In the hopes of safely ushering their souls from the building, she’d slit her wrists crosswise and joined them. In death, her arms were gathered around their bodies in the tub, and her jellied blood layered their skin, as if all five of them had returned to the womb.
And now, Tuesday night, Audrey Lucas shattered the bird-shaped glass meant for her wrists and decided not to go gently into that good night, even while her eyelids got heavy, and the monster inside her grew. Loretta Parker paged through Audrey’s cell-phone messages and found Saraub’s number at the hospital. She waited, and practiced her speech: “Your friend asked me to call. She’s quite ill. A terrible fever. Please, come straightaway!”
Then again, “Your pretty bitch isn’t so pretty. We cut off all her hair!” And again, “We slashed her face!” Loretta’s cataracts, like the eyes of the rest of the tenants, had gone black.
In 14B, Audrey pinched herself to keep awake, then tore the discarded cardboard boxes into small pieces, and chewed. She would get this key out, one way or another.
The tenants peered into 14B through drilled peepholes in 14A and 14C, or else listened with their ears pressed against the walls. In 3A, Benjamin Borrell put down the cigarette he’d been pressing into his forearm, and smiled. In 8C, Elaine Alexander turned down the volume on her favorite soap, General Hospital, and kissed the poster she’d tacked to her wall of Luke and Laura. In 14D, Evvie Waugh lay down on the floor, and beat his arms and legs against the wood until he bled. In 10B, Penelope Falco shaved her head, then her eyebrows, then plucked her lashes, so when the door opened, she’d appear newly born. Her speech finished, Loretta Parker danced in time with Schermerhorn’s piano music, her porcelain feet click-clacking.
The Breviary watched. Happy for the first time since Martin Hearst threw open its eyes over 150 years ago. Its purpose was finally manifest. It would house the door that destroyed mankind.
42
Doesn’t Every Generation Inherit Debt?
Tuesday evening, Saraub waved his mother good-bye, and sat back in the Craftmatic. Flicked the bed remote down and up, down and up. Perused the cable channels. He’d refused today’s Vicodin, which suddenly made ESPN’s greatest hits a lot less interesting.
He was getting released tomorrow. These seven days of rest had been good for his soul. He’d been working hard for a long time, and it had been nice, for once, to have nothing to do, and not even e-mail to check. He used the plastic prong the nurse had given him to lift the bedside phone. Dialed the first three digits of Audrey’s number. Hung up. Enough was enough. She knew where to find him; obviously, she just didn’t want to.
His agent had called this morning and told him that Bob Stern at Sunshine had been fired. “What does that mean?” Saraub asked.
“I don’t know. How would I know? It means finish the movie and find out.”
So that was the plan. He’d finish the movie. And after that movie, he’d make another one. And another one. He’d decided that when he got out of here, he’d leave his studio apartment and move out of Manhattan. He’d find a place in the boroughs where there was