Woke Up Lonely A Novel - By Fiona Maazel Page 0,83

he’d had flashlights mounted on the wall every few feet. Those failing, he’d had secured to the floor photoluminescent strips. No foresight had been lacking in the preparation of this route to the basement, so why in God’s name was it pitch-black? He was afraid of the dark. He had dermal crises in the dark. As a boy, he’d once woken up in the middle of a blackout and within five minutes was weeping fluid from sores erupted down his spine.

He threw out his arm and prayed to graze a flashlight along the way. He did, but the light had no batteries. He felt about the floor for the photoluminescent strips and found they had been painted over. He knew this because he could feel the impasto. He was going to kill Vicki. And Dean, because he had obviously been in on this. Who else had a universal? He wondered what the feds had promised him.

Thurlow had taken one yoga class in his life, so he knew what to call the position he was in, child’s pose, which was part supplicant come to pray for his child’s life and part child taking a nap. He had watched his daughter sleep this way, many years ago when she was not even a year old, on her belly, with upraised posterior and arms out like Superman. Most beautiful thing he had ever seen, before or since.

The tunnel floors were linoleum. Slick if there was moisture pearling on the walls and pipes, which there was. It smelled of boiler room. And wet fur. He told himself there was plenty of air in circulation and that, while he was afraid of the dark, he was not afraid of restricted space and, what was more, to manufacture anxieties post hoc did not suit a man of his stature. Never mind that a man of his stature should not be lumped on a tunnel floor, weeping in a pitch of love for his family that would not come.

He made it to the basement and felt along the wall for a light switch. With luck, his dietician would still be waiting for him by the cistern. They did this once a week, hydrostatic testing, which had him get inside the cistern, dispatch all the air from his lungs, and something about the water level and Brozek formula would tell him how fat he was inside. Today, though, the floor was wet—a couple of inches wet—and the cistern was overturned.

He was just about to investigate what toll spillage from the cistern had taken, when he got a bad idea about the how of its capsizing. It’d take at least two men to knock it over. Men with training, men with guns.

He heard a puling by the cistern, which turned out to be issuing from the cistern. It was the dietician, hiding. He said, “Marie, it’s only me, you can come out.”

She did not seem heartened.

“Marie, come on. It’s not as bad as all that. Listen”—but as he said this he realized there was actually something to listen to, a voice in a bullhorn or speaker demanding they come out in pairs, unarmed and docile. No one had to get hurt. “You heard them—those people are not going to hurt you. Just come on, give me your hand.”

But still she wouldn’t budge.

“Do you have a flashlight in there?”

She did.

He told her to turn it on, and when he was satisfied with the conditions, he crawled through the mouth of the cistern and joined her. She was sitting upright with her back in the curve of the pot; there was plenty of room for two. Her lab coat was wet, and she was shivering. Poor Marie. She was a French exchange student who hobbied in nutrition and anti-American sentiment, cowering in a pot with a man whose days were numbered.

They faced each other. Their legs rafted atop the water pooled in the basin.

The helicopters circled overhead, closer than before, which had the welcome effect of drowning out the bullhorn.

He said, “Just tell me, did you see who tipped this thing over? Men in some kind of military uniform?”

She nodded.

So SWAT had already been in the basement. Good thing you needed pass codes to get into the house.

She had the flashlight in her lap, aimed up at their chins, so that they might have been telling ghost stories.

“Come on, we need to get you some dry clothes,” and he made to leave the pot with her in tow. But she didn’t