Smoke

by Lisa Unger

  What are you doing over here, miss?”

  “I’m sorry,” said Lydia with an embarrassed smile. “I got a little lost on my way from the bathroom.”

  The woman looked at her stonily. She had hard, angular features and creamy white skin. “You’ll have to return to the meeting now.”

  “I was just heading back.”

  The blonde woman who’d led the group gathered outside into the meeting walked her back to the auditorium. Lydia slipped back into the dark and noticed that the crowd had thinned considerably. Trevor Rhames was booming now, his voice resonating; he was pacing wildly; something about society trapping people in a prison of self-hatred and materialism. But she wasn’t listening anymore. She was looking for a way out. She scanned the room for other doors and saw one down by the stage. But heavy and metal, with a glowing red exit sign over it, it looked like an exterior door. Shit, she thought. It was always a bad idea to split up. Always.

  They’d decided that to save time, Jeffrey would take the corridor to the adjacent building to see what was over there and she’d look for an administrative office with computers or files, maybe even a list of members. He jogged off down the hallway and disappeared while she watched. As soon as she turned the corner, the bony woman had been there, looking at her with hard, suspicious eyes.

  Lydia took a seat near the back and turned to see the woman standing by the door, her arms folded like a sentry. Lydia glanced around her. There had been about thirty people in the room, now there were maybe ten. In the dark, all she could see were the backs of their heads. They seemed to be nodding just slightly, almost in unison.

  If she got up to leave, they’d probably escort her out of the building. Jeffrey would be alone, not knowing she was out. Then she remembered the door leading to the kitchen. She could leave the building and then sneak back in that way. She got up and walked toward the door.

  “Leaving so soon?” asked the woman.

  “Yeah,” said Lydia. “I don’t think this is my cup of tea. No pun intended.”

  The woman offered a wan smile. There was something so cold about her, something so stiff.

  “We all find our way,” she said.

  Lydia wondered briefly if that was true. Did everyone find their way in this world? Didn’t some people get crushed, or left behind? Or was that the way they found, their way, if not the way they wanted.

  Two large men in the New Day uniform of blue jeans and white tunics were waiting outside the door. They wore the same cool, smug expressions. But all of them had those vacant eyes. They and the woman stayed close as she walked to the door. She felt their eyes on the back of her neck and she fought the urge to run or turn and punch one of them in their empty faces to see if they were really flesh-and-blood people. Out in the cold, they stood on the top stair leading to the church.

  “Good-night,” Lydia said and walked up the street. The blonde lifted a hand in farewell.

  Lydia pulled her coat tight around her and walked quickly north. She passed Dax sitting in the Rover but didn’t look at him. She could still feel their eyes on her. Dax didn’t look at her either; obviously he sensed something was wrong or saw the three standing in the doorway, watching her leave.

  Jeffrey crossed from the church building through the breezeway with glass walls into the taller condo building. He pushed through a light-colored wooden door and entered an empty foyer where the only sound was the buzzing of fluorescent lights. The floors and walls were crisp white, the high ceilings a robin’s egg blue. The empty reception desk that stood in front of the entrance was a white lacquer semicircle. The space was antiseptic, meant, he thought, to communicate purity, cleanliness. Then he remembered what Matt Stenopolis had told Lydia about the “cleansing” period new members were required to undergo. The place gave him the creeps and an uneasy instinct whispered that they should get out as fast as possible. He paused for a second, glancing around for cameras, but didn’t see any. He walked over to the reception desk, on which sat a multi-line phone, a clipboard, and a cup of pens printed with the New Day logo.

  Jeffrey realized when he held the pen in his hand that he’d seen the logo often on items like coffee cups, notepads. It hadn’t really clicked for him when he’d seen the logo on the van. But now he recalled seeing it on advertisements on the subway for things like depression counseling, addiction recovery, breaking the cycle of child abuse. The light blue line drawing of sunbeams reaching through cloud cover on a white background. He thought of the website and the brochures Dax had taken. It was outreach. Like the pedophile who picks the child with the lowest self-esteem, or the rapist who picks the smallest, most defenseless woman, they were trawling for people in the most pain, people who’d give almost anything to feel better.

  The list of visitors was blank. But Jeffrey could see that heavy handwriting on the page above had left an impression on the blank sheet that must have been below it. He held it up to the light and tilted it, hoping to make something out. But his eyes were not great to begin with, so he gave up quickly. He took the sheet, folded it, and put it in his pocket.

  The sounding of a soft bell startled him. He turned to see an elevator bank to his right. The lighted display above one of the doors indicated that the car was in a downward descent. He looked around for a place to hide.

  Lydia walked nearly two blocks as quickly as she could without looking as if she were afraid or in any kind of a rush. She passed some shops that were closed for the evening, a small café, a copy and mailing center, a pet store. The neighborhood was an awkward mix of businesses, private homes, and condo buildings. Some of the homes were old and regal, adding a quaintness to the area which otherwise would have been like any other modern city block. They stood proudly beside the larger, newer apartment buildings that had cropped up, looking a bit out of place but refusing to give ground.

  When she was out of sight of the church, she made a quick right and dashed between two condo buildings and followed an alley that ran parallel to the way she had come. She turned off the alley and cut through someone’s lawn and set off a motion detector as she passed, a floodlight lighting up the yard, revealing a rusted swing set and a sandbox filled with weeds. She moved quickly through a side yard and crossed a small dark street, underneath a canopy of towering elms. The night was dark and once she was off the main street, the streetlights there gave off little more than an orange glow. The neighborhood was quiet. She could see the blue flash of television screens and orange lamplight in bay windows.

  She came up behind the New Day building and crossed the yard quickly, edging the bushes on the perimeter and cutting across where the distance from the bushes to the building was shortest. She saw a door without handles and hoped it was the same door she’d opened for Jeffrey. She couldn’t be sure, she felt turned around and disoriented. She put her fingers between the frame and the door and tried to pull, but it was stuck fast. She couldn’t budge it. Either someone had found the tape and locked the door, or it was too heavy for her small fingertips-or it was the wrong door.

  She moved along the wall looking for another door in the same general area, feeling along the masonry. She was sure now, seeing the front of the building, that the door she was at was the right one. She went back and tried it again. She couldn’t move it. She felt her heart start to race as she realized she wasn’t going to be able to get back into the building. That Jeff was in there alone, thinking she was in there, too. She looked around for something to try to pry into the space between the frame and the door but there was nothing except some large rocks and a few thin branches.

  Jeffrey picked the lock on an inside door and slipped into a room just as he heard the elevator doors slide open behind him. Leaning against the wall, he listened to the sound of feet approaching. But whoever it was passed by the door, their shadows flashing on the thin white strip of light that came in under the door. Then there was silence.

  When he could breathe again, he looked around to find himself in what looked like a security ne
rve center. The lights were dim and the room was cool. There was a wall of locked glass cabinets housing rows of computer servers. He walked around the wall and came to an alcove containing twenty closed-circuit monitors in five rows of four. An empty seat that was still warm and a half-consumed bottle of water told him he wouldn’t be alone for long.

  Images of long empty hallways lined with closed doors, elevator banks, wide shots of the building’s exterior, the auditorium where Trevor Rhames was doing his preaching, flashed in intervals on the black-and-white screens. As he watched he saw Lydia being escorted from the building by a blonde woman and two big men. He watched until she was off camera. He knew she’d try to come back through the door they’d left open and that he’d have to hurry if he was going to meet her there.

  He sat at the computer monitor beside the security screens and moved the mouse. The dark screen came to life and a menu of options popped up in front of him. He clicked on the file that said “Camera Views” and found a list of subcategories. “Hallways and Exterior Views” was already highlighted. He chose a folder named “Interior Rooms” and the images on the screens changed.

  He let out a long breath. “Oh my God,” he said, just as he heard the shutters begin to come down and the alarms start to sound. Then the knob to the door started to turn.

  The night erupted with the thunderous sound of moving metal. Lydia took an unconscious step back and brought her hand to her chest. The security shutters were coming down over the doors and windows. Dax had been wrong. There was a security shutter over the door to the kitchen. She fought a rising tide of panic as she looked around on the ground and found a large rock. She pried it from the earth and raced to the door. She placed the rock at the base, holding it there, hoping to keep the door from coming down all the way.

  When the door hit the rock it made a terrible grinding sound and stopped, moved halfway back up then came to a final crunching halt, as if the rock had knocked it off its track. She sighed with relief. Jeffrey could still get out, if he would leave believing she was still inside. The lawn flooded with light then and Lydia was exposed.

  She heard the sound of footsteps and voices and saw two large forms turn the corner. They stood for a second, looking in her direction. The way the floods were shining, she could only make them out as tall and menacing shadows. One of them pointed. And then they both began running toward her.

  Lydia ran. She peered behind her once and caught the impression of bald heads and leather. She thought of the man they’d seen last night and the one who had followed her from her grandmother’s apartment. She felt the icy cold finger of fear on her spine, though her heart was a steam engine, working hard and burning hot. She could hear them gaining on her. They were bigger, had longer legs. There was no way she could outrun them.

  Then the Land Rover was pulling in front of her and coming to a squealing stop. The door flew open.

  “What the fuck happened? Where’s Jeff?” yelled Dax, starting to drive before she’d closed the door.

  “He’s still in there,” she said, breathless, slamming the door. “Loop around. We have to go back.”

  Dax gunned the engine and the Rover launched forward. Lydia looked behind to see the two men who’d been chasing her come to a stop in the middle of the street. Dax turned a corner fast and the rubber squealed against the concrete.

  “I knocked one of the security doors off its track,” she said, still trying to catch her breath. “The door to the kitchen where he came in… he can still get out that way.”

  “I thought…”

  “Your guy was wrong or he lied. There was a security door.”

  Dax issued a string of expletives that embarrassed even Lydia, who swore like a truck driver without even thinking about it most of the time.

  “What do we do?” asked Lydia.

  “They won’t expect us to come back,” he said. “I’m going to make a long loop and then we’ll come back around.”

  He started talking then about what they would do next, how she shouldn’t worry and how Jeffrey could take care of himself. But she wasn’t listening. All she could hear was a ringing in her ears and the pounding of her heart. She looked at the brown building as they approached again from the opposite direction. It was locked down like a fortress. All she could think was, Jeffrey’s in there. I left him in there.

  Thirteen

  Some memories don’t fade with time and distance. Some grow more vivid, while the people, events, and places around them, just before or just after, become faint and vague. Like colorized black-and-white films, they remain eerily bright, something just off about them, something that glows. They take on a special cast and over time become mythic in their scope and impact.

  Lydia met Jeffrey Mark on the worst day of her life. She was fifteen years old and she had just discovered the murdered body of her mother. She’d sat rigid on the front stoop of her home, unable to respond to the people who tried to help her. She had gotten the idea in her mind that if she didn’t speak, if she sat very still on the stoop and didn’t react to the horror she had just witnessed, that she would wake up to discover she was dreaming. She clung to this idea. It made sense to her.

  Lydia remembered sitting on the stoop with a female police officer who had tried her best to console her and to convince her to go inside the house, but Lydia would not move. She could remember clearly the scent of the woman’s shampoo, the feel of her hand on her arm. But her words were just a soothing mumble that Lydia couldn’t understand. She sat there for hours, stone-faced and shivering, while police officers walked to and from the house.

  It was sitting on that stoop that she first saw Jeffrey. He pulled up with another man in a black car. She saw him looking at her as the sedan came to a stop, gravel crunching under its wheels. He walked toward her, his eyes on her the whole time. He looked strong and important to her, like someone who would have rescued her mother if he could have. He knelt before her and asked the female officer to leave.

  “Lydia,” he said. “I know how afraid and sad you are right now. But I need you to be tough. I need you to help me find the man that hurt your mom.”

  He held out his hand to her then. There was something about the way he spoke to her that brought her back to herself, something about his eyes that made her trust him right away. He seemed like a superhero to her, ten feet tall and bulletproof. She took his hand without a word and allowed him to lead her back into the house.

  Part of her, even now, nearly twenty years later, still thought of him as a superhero. If anyone could fix the wrong things, it was Jeffrey. For a long time, when she realized that she had fallen in love with him and he with her along the way, she kept him at a distance. To love him like that would be to acknowledge him as human, that his heart could stop beating, that the boundaries of his flesh were weak. It was an idea she could barely stand; her fear of losing him had almost caused her to never allow herself to love him at all.

  “Are you with me, Lydia? Are you listening?” Dax had taken a large gun from the glove compartment and was handing it to her. “Pull it together, woman. We have to go get your husband out of there.”

  He had pulled the Rover onto a side street and was leaning over her to get another gun from beneath her seat. It was his big Magnum Desert Eagle, the nasty Israeli gun he favored. It was as big and as loud as a cannon.

  “He’ll come back to that door,” she said.

  “But he won’t leave without you,” Dax said, opening the car door and easing himself onto the street. He looked stiff and as if he was in pain. He went around to the trunk and Lydia saw him take out a crowbar. He stuck the gun in his jacket, kept the crowbar in his hand.

  “He’ll know I’m out,” she said as he came around to her side of the car. “Because we agreed to meet back there when we were done or if something went wrong.”

  “What if he thinks you got caught?”

  “I don’t know,” she said as they started moving quickly to the alleyway she had used before. She noti
ced how badly Dax was limping.

  “Dax-” she started. He put up a hand.

  “No arguments. Let’s go.”

  “I thought you said there was no way in once the gates were down,” she said.

  “No,” he said, giving her an uneasy glance. “I said there was no way to get in quietly.”

  Jeffrey wondered if he’d hit the guy too hard, if maybe he’d killed him. He looked young, lying at Jeffrey’s feet, a river of blood flowing from his nose. Jeffrey leaned down and put a finger to his neck. He was relieved to feel the blood pumping through his artery. The kid would have a headache, likely a couple of shiners and a broken nose. That’s what happened when you took the butt of a Glock between the eyes. Jeffrey heard the Nextel beep, and a voice said, “Charley, are you clear? Are you clear?”

  Jeffrey took the phone from the kid’s waistband. “I’m clear,” he said into the mike.

  “Good. We need you down at the auditorium. It’s possible that there was a second intruder, still on the premises. We need to organize.”

  “Okay,” said Jeffrey.

  “How many times do I have to tell you, man?” said the voice snottily. “Ten-four, okay? Ten-four.”

  “Ten-four,” said Jeffrey. What an asshole, he thought. What difference did it make really?

  He looked down at Charley. Was he one of the “cleansed” members of The New Day? Was he here of his own free will? Or did he come here for help with his drinking or gambling or depression and get sucked in? He was clean shaven with silky blonde hair that hung in wispy bangs over his eyes. He was skinny to the point of being emaciated with a pouty mouth and long, girlish lashes. Jeffrey put him at nineteen, possibly twenty years old, about a hundred and fifty pounds. He bent down and took the kid by both of his hands and pulled him into a sitting position. With effort he hoisted him over his shoulder. The dead weight was almost too much for him, but something within him wouldn’t allow him to leave Charley behind. Not after what he’d seen on those security monitors.