stuttering, giving the tunnel a horror movie feel, and a few others were dead out. Someone had pasted a New England Patriots bumper sticker on one wall.
More carelessness, she thought. More drift.
The door at the Back Half end of the corridor bore a sign reading AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Mrs. Sigsby used her card and pushed it open. Beyond was another elevator lobby. A short upward journey brought them to a lounge only slightly less utilitarian than the service tunnel they had taken to get to Back Half. Heckle—real name Dr. Everett Hallas—was waiting for them. He was wearing a big grin and constantly touching the corner of his mouth. It reminded Mrs. Sigsby of the Dixon boy’s obsessive nose-pulling. Except Dixon was only a kid, and Hallas was in his fifties. Working in Back Half took a toll, the way working in an environment polluted with low-level radiation would take a toll.
“Hello, Mrs. Sigsby! Hello, Security Director Stackhouse! How wonderful to see you! We should get together more often! I’m sorry about the circumstances that have brought you here today, however!” He bent and patted the canvas bundle containing Maureen Alvorson. Then touched the corner of his mouth, as if patting at a cold sore only he could see or feel. “In the midst of life, cetra-cetra.”
“We need to make this quick,” Stackhouse said. Meaning, Mrs. Sigsby supposed, we have to get out of here. She quite concurred. This was where the real work was done, and Drs. Heckle and Jeckle (real name Joanne James) were heroes for doing it, but that didn’t make it any easier to be here. She could already feel the atmosphere of the place. It was like being in a low-level electrical field.
“Yes, of course you do, the work never ends, wheels within wheels, big fleas with little fleas to bite em, don’t I know, right this way.”
From the lounge, with its ugly chairs, equally ugly sofa, and elderly flatscreen, they entered a hall with a thick blue carpet on the floor—in Back Half, the children sometimes fell down and bumped their valuable little heads. The trolley’s wheels left tracks in the nap. This looked much like a corridor on the residence level of Front Half, except for the locks on the doors, which were all shut. From behind one of them, Mrs. Sigsby heard pounding and muffled cries of “Let me out!” and “At least give me a fucking aspirin!”
“Iris Stanhope,” Heckle said. “She’s not feeling well today, I’m afraid. On the upside, several of our other recent arrivals are holding up remarkably well. We’re having a movie this evening, you know. And fireworks tomorrow.” He giggled and touched the corner of his mouth, reminding Mrs. Sigsby—grotesquely—of Shirley Temple.
She brushed at her hair to make sure it was still in place. It was, of course. What she was feeling—that low buzz along her exposed skin, the sense that her eyeballs were vibrating in their sockets—wasn’t electricity.
They passed the screening room with its dozen or so plush seats. Sitting in the front row were Kalisha Benson, Nick Wilholm, and George Iles. They were wearing their red and blue singlets. The Benson girl was sucking on a candy cigarette; Wilholm was smoking a real one, the air around his head wreathed with gray smoke. Iles was rubbing lightly at his temples. Benson and Iles turned to look at them as they rolled past with their canvas-wrapped burden; Wilholm just went on staring at the blank movie screen. A lot of steam has been taken out of that hotdog, Mrs. Sigsby thought with satisfaction.
The cafeteria was beyond the screening room, on the other side of the corridor. It was much smaller than the one in Front Half. There were always more children here, but the longer they stayed in Back Half, the less they ate. Mrs. Sigsby supposed an English major might call that irony. Three kids were currently present, two slurping up what looked like oatmeal, the other—a girl of about twelve—simply sitting with a full bowl in front of her. But when she saw them passing with the trolley, she brightened.
“Hi! What you got there? Is it a dead person? It is, isn’t it? Was her name Morris? That’s a funny name for a girl. Maybe it’s Morin. Can I see? Are her eyes open?”
“That’s Donna,” Heckle said. “Ignore her. She’ll be at the movie tonight, but pretty soon I expect she’ll be moving on. Maybe later this week. Greener pastures, cetra-cetra. You know.”