and practically dragged him to his car. From there, she directed him to the Hamm Building for reasons unknown, and they’d made the drive in no time thanks to zero traffic at such an hour.
He had no idea why she’d wanted to come.
He wasn’t dumb enough to question it.
She wanted to go back to the Hamm Building, where her office was? Okay. To check on her “patients” and/or perform more stuffed animal surgery? No problem, to the Hamm Building they would go. He’d take her to the Empire State Building. The Golden Gate Bridge. The Goderich Salt Mine. Pripyat. Wherever she wanted.
Lila slung her tote over one shoulder and fell into step with him as they left the car and took the elevator to the offices. “I just wanna check my intakes and then show you somethin’.”
“Sure.” She was a bit tipsy, which was to be expected after she’d sucked down two of Annette’s notoriously vodka-heavy screwdrivers. (“It should not taste like a breakfast drink,” Annette had explained. “It should taste like something that will knock you on your ass and also oranges.”)
She brought him to her office suite on the second floor, humming as she unlocked it and disabled the security system. It took him a few seconds to realize she was humming the theme from Psycho. Not the bit from the shower scene. The first movement by Herrmann, which The Simpsons used in one of their “Treehouse of Horrors” episodes.
She had quite a few Priority Mail boxes waiting for her, which she quickly shuffled through, then stacked indifferently on the nearest table. “Nothing that can’t wait until Monday,” she said. “And two of them are repeat offenders! If you don’t want your manic toddler to tear the head off his stuffed snakes, stop giving him stuffed snakes.”
“These kids today,” Oz sighed, because he couldn’t help it.
“I’m gonna lock up and then take you upstairs, if that’s—”
“Okay.” Upstairs, downstairs, the roof, a parking garage, a closet: it made no difference. Never in life had he wanted to follow someone while not caring about the destination. It was exhilarating and a little frightening. “I need to hit the Men’s, and I’ll find you.”
“Okay. See you in a couple. Think you’ll like this.”
He was sure he would. Drinks? A second chili-less dinner? A moonlit walk on the roof with a biting wind and the wind chill hovering at twenty degrees? Baling hay? A tonsillectomy? He was up for whatever the curly-haired devil/darling had in mind.
First, the loo. He washed his hands, looked up at the mirror, then swallowed a groan of horror. He liked to think that going without sleep, skipping meals, and obsessing over Kama-Rupa when not obsessing over the Smalls made him look lean and dangerous, but the dark circles under his eyes made him look like an addled raccoon. Nothing to be done about it, so he walked to the end of the hall, went up a flight, took a left and another flight, and there she was, obligingly holding half of a double door open when she spotted him at the end of the hall. “You didn’t know where I was going. How’d you find me up here?”
Oz tapped the side of his nose.
“Oh. You’re saying I smell.”
He was so appalled, he nearly fell down the stairs he’d just climbed. “What? No! You don’t smell! I mean, you do smell. We all smell. Everybody smells. Including you. But it’s okay! You smell wonderful. Not that I’ve been going around smelling you. Because I haven’t. That would be weird. I can’t help smelling you, though. I mean, I can, but not…oh thank God you’re fucking with me.”
She giggled. “Sorry. It’s just so easy. You get all stammer-y, like Hugh Grant on Benadryl. C’mere, look at this.”
He obliged, stepping into the low-lit room as the door shut behind them.
Whoa. “This is amazing,” he said, goggling like a yokel.
“Right?”
“I mean, it’s a big building, but that big?”
“I know.”
“But why is it here?”
She was just standing there, hands on hips, grinning. Delighted by his amazement. “Because the Hamm Building used to show movies.”
“It was a movie theater?”
“Movie palace,” she corrected with relish. “And not just any movie palace. Back in the day, it was a palace that held the largest, most expensive, dazzling, amazing super-cool breathtaking huge movie theater in the entire Midwest.”
“You’re really excited about this.”
“The new owners decided to open up a brewery and other offices, and they always meant to do something with the theater, but they ran