"Housekeeping," Louisa finally tries. It's far too late for housekeeping. "Room service?" A second attempt.
"She's the one who was in his room last night" one of the men says while the other steps forward, raising his arms, coming toward her like a zombie, ready to grab hold of Louisa's shoulders.
Just at that moment she feels something kick her in her stomach, something like a horse's hoof or a locomotive engine. It's Walter. It's the file. She runs toward the first man, and with one very sharp, very quick elbow to his belly — POW! — and a quick movement — ZIP!—she dashes past the second man. She is out in the hallway, sprinting past each guest-room door, taking corners at top speed, smashing directly — BAM! — into a requisite room-service cart left, it would seem purposely, in her path. Cymbals of aluminum chafing dishes crash to the floor. She hears all the sound effects of the radio show. She does not stop to examine the spill but continues to run, making her way past the elevators to the back stairwell. The patterns in the carpet blur into a strange jungle of florid floral prints that could wrap their vines around her fleeing ankles if she weren't so fast.
The zombie man pauses a moment to recover — COUGH COUGH—and then takes off after her, chasing Louisa through the Hotel New Yorker, yelling, "Stop, thief! Stop, thief!" The other man, a bit slower on the uptake, a bit more girth to his middle, falls in line behind him.
She makes it to the stairwell and once there she relies upon an old trick gleaned from the radio dramas. Louisa goes against gravity and begins to climb up, rather than down, the staircase. Having just reached the landing, where she is out of view, she hears one man enter the stairwell. He yells back to the other, "You take the elevator. She might have gone that way!"
Louisa freezes, and the man one floor below her also freezes, listening for her. GULP. He pauses there directly below her for one moment to listen. She holds her breath, and after an unbearable second he takes of, spiraling down the stairs.
With her back against the wall Louisa breathes heavily, listening to his footsteps. His footsteps that, after descending four or five stories, stop. She listens, and what she fears may happen, does. The stairwell falls silent. Once again she holds her breath tight against the wall. There is no sound except the pounding of a steam radiator that has lost its steam.
"Young lady," he calls out to her.
Louisa's skin puckers as his words scurry through the stairwell looking for her. The words creep up her spine and across the back of her neck.
"Young lady," he says again, this time beginning to chuckle. HA HA HA. He's figured out her trick.
Even if she could make it up to the roof, where would she go from there? The Hotel New Yorker stands all alone, a pinnacle in the sky. There would be no choice except for straight down — WHOOSH — at a rate of speed Louisa is uncomfortable with. No. Up, she realizes, is not the answer, but she hears him begin to climb, and so Louisa runs for the door to the thirty-fourth floor and the man once again starts to give chase. Rounding the corner to the bank of elevators, she realizes that her father's life has come down to this moment: either there will be an open elevator car waiting for her or there won't. She turns the corner. All six elevator doors are closed, but standing in the center of the hall, a couple, revelers on their way down to hear Johnny Long perhaps, have already placed a call for an elevator. Louisa stops running. The couple smiles. The woman's evening gown has tiny teardrop pearl beads stitched to its bodice. "Good evening," the couple says to Louisa.
Louisa stares at them as though they are not made of flesh and blood but words, strange beings who are with her in this radio play. Louisa wipes sweat from her forehead. She presses the already illuminated DOWN button once more for good measure and then the seconds begin to tick past, each one a gaping hole, each moment so massive that all the universe is held within its arms. Louisa waits, rocking onto the outsides of her feet and ankles. Every moment that passes is the worst pain—TICKTOCKTICKTOCKTICK—a knife that makes it difficult to breathe. Every moment she can feel the man in the stairwell gaining on her. Louisa listens for the door to burst open while monitoring the progress of two elevator cars on the illuminated panel. There is one elevator descending from the thirty-seventh floor, and there is one car stopped below them at 32. Louisa begins to chew her lip, pulling madly at the side of her uniform. The stairwell door swings opens at the very moment that—DING!—the elevator car arrives. The couple steps in, as does Louisa while listening to the sound of approaching footsteps. "Where to?" the bellhop asks.
"Ballroom, please," the couple replies.
"Take me to the tunnel," Louisa whispers, croaks, and the doors swing shut, cutting out the sound of one pair of swiftly gaining footfalls, a locomotive making its way down the hall. CHOO-CHOO!
Louisa tries to catch her breath. The numbers tick by—33, 32, 31, 30, 29, 28, 27, 26, 25, 24, 23, 22, 21, 20, and then, finally, the car runs express from there down to the lobby. The elevator comes to a stop. "Good evening," the couple calls out again as they disembark, turning back to smile at Louisa as if she, with them, is on the inside of some great joke.
"Good evening," the bellhop calls after them before glancing back at Louisa, giving her a rather sour look.
"You really ought to ride the service elevator," he informs her before turning back to his controls. He does not make a move. "I'm not supposed to give you a ride. I mean, I don't have to." He does not close the elevator doors but demonstrates his intention to simply sit there, to wait for a tipping customer whom he might shepherd up to a suite of rooms. The elevator man, though she could hardly call him a man, pulls a book of logic puzzles from inside his uniform. With the stub of a greasy pencil, he begins to deduce. Benjamin, William, Charles, Louis, and Andrew each own a car. One has a brown car, one has a green car, one has a black car, one has a white car, and one has a navy car. After applying the following conditions, figure out the color of each person's car.
Louisa wants to scream. She is stunned. Though it takes her a moment, eventually she understands that he will not be giving her a ride anywhere. Lost in his logic, he does not even look up at Louisa as she peeks her head from the door, looking left and then right before stepping out into the lobby. Her heart begins to race again. "You're a..." she turns to tell him but then cannot come up with an appropriate insult, so she simply shuts her mouth and leaves him there. She turns left and begins to run again, taking off in the direction of the main stairwell.
The Hotel New Yorker has roots dug deep down into the bedrock of Manhattan. These five subterranean floors have always seemed wondrous, mysterious, and even, at times, frightening to Louisa. A barbershop, a hair salon, kitchens, bank vaults, and perhaps the most wonderful feature of all, there below almost everything, the hotel stretches out an arm, a tentacle, into an underground tunnel that disappears deep into the belly of Pennsylvania Station. Through it, she plans to escape with the file, meeting Arthur and Mr. Tesla in Bryant Park.
Louisa makes her way down, passing through the machine shop and the bank stairwell. The shops have already closed up for the evening and switched out their lights. Through the glass she sees the darkened barber chairs, empty, waiting for tomorrow. She listens but hears nothing other than a few intermittent creaks and surges coming from above, the groans of the hotel. She is totally alone. Even the radio narrator and sound-effect man in her head have been silenced. Down in the basement there is no reception. She is all alone.
A few well-spaced overhead lamps light the way to the tunnel entrance, a hole that Louisa has suddenly become afraid to enter. She peers down into the underground passageway. It looks a bit dim but still she enters. Terra cotta tiles interspersed with Mayan designs. Dragons roaring, owls soaring—monster beings and ancient shapes screech and take flight in the tilework. The lights seem to grow dimmer and Louisa cannot see what is up ahead. The tunnel takes a sharp turn to the left. The corner is obscured and she has no way of knowing what lies beyond. She stands frozen, alone, underneath the traffic of Eighth Avenue. A chill
sets in, a fear of what might lie ahead. She takes one step forward and then another. Her heels click and reverberate, each one echoing against the cold tile floors and ceiling. Hugging one side of the tunnel, she keeps her head tucked to her chin, dragging a finger up against the side wall for some stability.
"I'll build it," her mother had said once, or else maybe she hadn't. Maybe Walter had just made that up, a story to tell, a comfort to Louisa. Neither of them knew what it meant, and it doesn't matter now. Seams have unraveled that can't be brought back together again. Still, they are the only words Louisa ever had from her and at moments when she is frightened she pulls these words out as some sort of force field. "I'll build it" she whispers. "I'll build it" The words make more sense with each repetition.
Louisa can't see more than twenty feet down the tunnel. The light is brown and diffused into a fog, as if there is a patient but horrible storm ahead. Each footstep forward requires a certain amount of faith that the far end holds an escape route for her, a faith that is rapidly dwindling. The air is thick and Louisa feels a bit weak, as if this soupy oxygen is having trouble getting into her lungs. The flow of air changes patterns in unknown currents underground. A slow breeze fills the tunnel with the metallic scent of dirt and minerals, of dread. The wind is stony.
What kind of tunnel is this? A tunnel where someone could walk from the world of words to a place that there are no words for? Louisa is terrified. Faced with the unknown that might be lying there in wait at the end of the tunnel, the government men seem a minor threat. Indeed, she nearly wishes that the government men would hurry up and catch her. She can't bring herself to take one step farther and is just about ready to turn back and surrender. She stops, looks down into the darkness, cranes her neck forward. She drops her head, feeling small and faithless.
The tunnel waits. She attempts one more step.
"Lou?"
She's not making it up. She hears her name called from the dark end. Her breath disappears.
"Yes?" she asks in just a whisper. "Dad," she says. "What?" she asks him and her voice is whisked away down into the darkness. "What?" she repeats a bit louder, though she is unsure which "what" she means.
Louisa presses up against the tile. She hopes to force her heart back into her rib cage. She shuts her eyes and slides down the wall, crouching on the floor, afraid to go any closer to the turn in the tunnel. She is not ready. She wants to stay in this world. She wants to stay with Arthur. Louisa hides her head in the cavern of her knees, trying to make herself as small as she can. She squeezes her eyes shut so tightly that the darkness there becomes marred with bright streaks of turquoise and fuchsia.
"Lou?"
She hears it again.
"Lou?" And then she sees him coming. Someone is approaching her, calling her name. Mr. Tesla? No. This man is too short to be Mr. Tesla and yet she knows who he is. She stands so as not to choke on her fear. It is Azor. Azor, who died today.
"You're not going to believe this," he tells her, shaking both his hands by his sides.
And he is right. She does not believe it. "Azor," she says. This time she almost does faint.
"Lou. It worked," he says. "It worked, Lou."
"No, it didn't, Azor." She is slowly backing farther and farther away from Azor as he continues to approach. She slides her back against the wall, retreating.
"Yeah, it did. I came here from Monday. After you and your dad left, remember, Arthur stayed to help me? He got the thing working. It worked, Lou. It worked. I just came here from there. You and your dad left only a few hours ago. Remember, you said to me, 'I don't think he's from the future at all. Lonely, maybe, but not because he's from the future.' Remember? That just happened, just a few hours ago."
"What are you doing here?"
"You gave me an idea."
"What?"
"I want Mr. Tesla to come to the future with me. It's where he belongs. Maybe they'll appreciate him there."
"That's a really bad idea, Azor."
"Arthur didn't think so."
She shakes her head. She has to stay focused here. "Azor, something happened today. I have to tell you."
"What? No, don't tell me."
"It's the worst. The worst, Azor."
"Please. Don't, Lou. It could be dangerous to know what happens. It could ruin it. It could change everything, make it so you never would be born or something like that. Understand? It's dangerous."
"Azor—"
"Is it about you and Arthur? I should never have told you. Let me guess. Did he—"
"No. It's about you. It's about you and Dad and what happens today, January 7th, 1943, Azor."
"Shh! Don't! Please don't tell me." Azor holds up his hands and then covers his ears with them. He stops walking toward her, as if she is now the scary one, the one who knows too much. They stare at each other, both drawing breath, both afraid of such unravelings, until the moment is cut in two by the sound of hurried footsteps, a pair of them entering the tunnel, running, looking for Louisa.
"Azor." Louisa says his name one more time. "You die today. You and Dad die today in that time machine." And as she had feared, saying it does make it real. Azor disappears absolutely, entirely, immediately. He is gone. The tunnel is empty and Louisa is alone.
"Azor?" The end of the tunnel, which just moments ago seemed to be some sort of secret, darkened passage leading down to death, now looks like a perfectly regular, well-lit passage for commuters and hotel guests. "Azor!" she yells after him, though her call loses steam halfway through, drowned out by a number of fears. First, she worries that he was right, that she has changed the future by speaking it. Maybe she will leave this tunnel and find that New York City has been completely destroyed by the Germans. She raises her hand up to her mouth before another, much worse thought occurs. Maybe none of this really happened at all. Maybe she is all alone with no time machine, no hope for the future, no Azor, no Arthur, no Tesla, no father.
Two hands, damp, pinching paws, grab her arms and twist her around, away from the tunnel. "Come on." She is shoved all the way back to the stairwell. She is marched up into the Hotel New Yorker, returned to the place where life continues in a very straight and narrow path, a path that leads Louisa and the two government agents back to room 3326.
***
JANUARY 1943
HOTEL NEW YORKER
LOUISA DEWELL—MAID
INTERVIEW
Please state your name for the record.
What are you doing with Mr. Tesla's things?
Miss, state your name for the record.
Louisa Dewell. What are you doing with Mr. Tesla's things? Who are you?
You are friends with Mr. Tesla?
(Subject does not answer.)
You are friends with Mr. Tesla?
(Unintelligible.)
Louder, please.
Yes. I am.
Did Mr. Tesla ever show you anything he was working on?
He showed me many things.
Why don't you tell us what you remember.
What is it that you're looking for?
What were you looking for?
My father.
In our hotel room? You were looking for your father?
Of course not.
What were you looking for?
Mr. Tesla.
Mr. Tesla is your father?
Idiots.
What does your father have to do with Mr. Tesla?
Mr. Tesla invented a death ray that can bring people back to life. I need it for my father.
The death ray doesn't bring people back to life. It kills people.
No, it doesn't.
Yes, it does. I mean it would, possibly, if it actually worked. Mr. Tesla never built one. He hasn't made anything that works in years.
I saw the file. It said, saving human life.
Miss.
I don't believe you.
Why don't you just tell us what you remember?
18
Electricity itself is
immortal.
—Otis T. Carr
WHAT I REMEMBER.
Lightning, my father once said, strikes the earth one hundred times per second, every second of every day. I don't see how that could possibly be true, and though I would have liked to believe what he said, I couldn't. The bolts of lightning I'd seen in my life had been so few in number, so precious, as to be rare.
The Invention of Everything Else Page 27