“Don’t bother.” Andre grips his luggage. “It’s where they keep the ghosts.”
Brendan flicks a switch, and the vestibule comes into view. Dangling from a live wire, a single bulb flickers above a stack of soiled mattresses. At once, Andre recognizes, swept into a corner, the mark of junkies: broken vials, used Band-Aids, ash-tipped matches in dove-shaped ashtrays. He’s surprised by the absence of rusty syringes, but maybe Brendan’s cleared away the best evidence. He wonders what caused the junkies to leave, then wonders whether they plan to return. This house seems too perfect to simply abandon: hidden deep behind a stand of black willows, far from the country road, not a neighbor for three miles.
“I started cleaning yesterday, when I got here,” Brendan says, seemingly not in search of praise, but as an excuse to say, I can do better given more time. “I concentrated on the apartment upstairs. And, you know, getting rid of the smell.”
Brendan pushes forward, passing beneath an archway, and flicks another switch. The viewing room is small and square, with walls stained by graffiti and shotgun spray. A lone dusty pew faces a felt-topped altar, and an exposed overhead pipe drips into a champagne chiller. Andre doesn’t have much experience with funerals; in his entire life, he’s attended only two. Last year, a senior associate drove his Ford Fusion into the Potomac after failing to make junior partner. Six years ago, Mrs. Fitz’s second husband died of colorectal cancer. He didn’t know either man particularly well, and he realizes that one day he will attend his brother’s. A soft sigh escapes his lips. He imagines standing in the shadow of Hector’s casket, imagines the loneliness of losing his only kin. He knows that few mourners will attend. The brothers didn’t keep many friends, and the ones they did are now missing, imprisoned, or dead. Maybe Mrs. Fitz and their mother will pay their respects. Maybe Cassie will too. Every person Andre’s ever loved fitting in half a pew.
“Our hardware is supposed to arrive tomorrow afternoon.” Brendan opens a side door that leads to a tomblike hall. “I was thinking we might set up shop on this level. Lots of room for monitors and maps. Plenty of workspace.”
“That’s thirty grand worth of equipment, and this floor doesn’t look secure. Or dry. Maybe the attic. Higher floors might give us better access to the satellites.” Andre spins around. “She really put us in an abandoned funeral home?”
Brendan leads the way down the hall. A wolf. A bear. A mountain-lion cub. Mounted heads decorate the walls. Andre expects at least one face to show surprise, but instead, each shows aggression, curled lips revealing hind teeth as though each beast expected to win this one last fight.
The hall ends beside a curved staircase missing a rail. To Andre, the bottom stair feels infirm, and for the first time, he questions his own safety. In thirty-five years, he’s survived one manipulative, mentally ill mother; two years’ imprisonment; and three Democratic national conventions. Wouldn’t it be a shame to die here, neck broken after falling through a flimsy floor? So he ascends the staircase quickly, a step behind Brendan, avoids placing too much weight on any one step, until, at last, they reach a platform that also threatens collapse.
“I did my best.” Brendan slides open a door to reveal a parlor and kitchen. The combined space is far from perfect—why is the air so muggy in here?—but Brendan has cleaned and made improvements, furnishing cheaply, playfully, with futons, beanbag chairs, basketball hoops above each door. The space has a sterile, almost toxic smell: ammonia, bleach, a hint of lye. He suspects the chemical cleaners might bond to form a carcinogen, but cancer’s a small price to pay for thirteen weeks of inoffensive air.
“Everything’s up here. The kitchen, bathroom, both bedrooms,” Brendan says. “All the electrical outlets work, as does the plumbing. Though I don’t recommend we drink the water. Your room’s over here.”
Andre expects bunk beds, lofts made of two-by-fours, pan-African posters of Bob Marley. Instead, the bedroom, small and square, contains one twin bed, a plywood desk, a banker’s lamp, and a wooden armchair. The built-in shelves slant slightly, pointing toward the glue traps that line the wall, and a draft sways wire hangers hooked to a rod that runs the length of the room. Brendan says, “I hope you like it.”
“You did all this?” Andre appreciates the gesture, appreciates Brendan’s willingness