by Fiona Maazel
“Chitchat?” he said. “Nice weather we’re having”—and he began to laugh and then to snuffle.
“Visibility is excellent,” she said. “Not a cloud in sight.”
“Okay, wait,” he said. “I don’t like this game. The weather’s important to me—oh, forget it.” And the snuffling got worse. She told him to stop.
“I can’t. It’s probably three in the morning. I have a sister now. I need to get out of here.”
“You can,” she said. “Cry now, and what will you do tomorrow? Or the day after that? We could be here months.”
“Months? Don’t say that.”
“Well, it’s possible. So all I’m suggesting is: ration.”
“I don’t think you can run out of misery. We’ve been kidnapped; I can be miserable for as long as we’re here.”
“Wrong, wrong.” Sitting up. “You can dry out. Lose your ability to feel. One day you are sobbing for the beauty and horror of it all, and the next you are Stonehenge.”
“These fucking hoods,” he said. “I can’t breathe.”
Only he was breathing fine. In and out—what more did he want? He was afraid of small spaces, hated the elevator, and had earlier complained that his face was aswelter. There was no way to doff the hoods, and breathing at a clip only made the sensation worse. Anne-Janet had suggested he visualize, and to the extent she had stopped hearing the suck and wheeze of his lungs, it had worked. You are sitting on the bottom of the ocean and observing the sky. After a while, he’d asked how she’d gotten so adept in the pursuit of calm and she said, MRI. Four every year. Spend enough time in the coffin space of an MRI and you become inured to its terrors. If Ned understood that she was, with this response, vanishing the difference between arming yourself against fear and not needing the armor at all, he did not say. He did not have to. Anne-Janet knew the difference; she wore armor on her teeth.
“You’re doing fine,” she said. “But if the ocean thing isn’t working, maybe try to think of yourself as one of those hawks who wears a hood to keep calm. And maybe, if it helps, that the falconer is your mom. Or a friend. I dunno.”
She could hear him shifting in his cot, turning on his side. Maybe he was fetal. Maybe he was thinking about how to flirt, too. Equally mindful of the bad timing of it all, the inappropriateness of it all, but willing to go out on that limb just the same.
“Remember our speed date?” he said. “How I told you I’m adopted? Just found out? Remember that part? Mom’s not so high on my list these days.”
“Oh, right,” she said. “Let’s just stick with the ocean. I’m on the floor, too. It’s sort of mushy.”
“Lot of fish, though.”
“Yeah? What kind?”
“I don’t know. But they’re tropical.”
“What are they saying?”
“Not much. I do all the talking.”
She smiled and laughed and then, for laughing, she blushed. Blushed in the dark, which bereaved the color of its biological purpose, which was to wile. So this was wiling the blind.
“Ned, do you think we’re actually in danger?” and she tried to sound in earnest, a little timid but ready to blossom at the first sign of hope. Because the fact was, she didn’t think they were in danger, but then she was not asking for his opinion so much as trying to undo the impression she had given him that she was bossy. After all, for the purpose of shooting up an ordeal with amorous content, wasn’t panic the grail? She should grope for his lapels. Weep into his collar. Fling her arms around his neck and heave with bosom cleaved to his chest.
“Definitely,” he said. “I think we’re going to die here. Unless—do you think we’re going to die?”
“I don’t know,” she said, and she meant it, because if the danger wasn’t mortal, it was spiritual, her spirit in free fall the longer this conversation failed to twin up their fears in lust.
Back and forth. She weighed her options.
At home: a sick mom and the burden of caring for this mom, which would fall to her alone. That, plus an emotional terrain that smoldered as though after a great fire but that could yield up nothing new, and in this the paradox of trauma: the past could live on in you with an energy you could never muster for the life that was happening to you now. And just think: tomorrow, she could be returned to all that. Unharmed, unchanged.
She rolled on her back and arched her spine to accommodate her wrists. She knit her shoulder blades until they hurt. As proportions went, her arms were orangutan vis-à-vis the rest of her body, so she was able to loop them under her ass and set them on her thighs. After that, the pick was easy. Thurlow’s men had frisked her but failed to consider the wire of her push-up bra, or what a girl with skill could do with it.
First thing, she took off her hood. A light shimmied under the door, dim and distant, and so the room was almost as dark when her eyes readjusted. She stood. And looked at Ned. He was on his side, legs drawn up. She tiptoed his way.
There were nice things about this man that seemed nicer for being unseen. His hair, parted down the middle, the kind you can rake through without snag—it had acquired a glow in her memory that struck out against the doom of where they were now. The same went for his hands and face—ruddy and bright, owing to joys wrought in the freeing of Anne-Janet from her darker self.
She sat cross-legged by the side of his cot. She could see the outline of his lips pressed into the burlap. His breath was warm on her face and came steadily, which meant he was asleep. She tilted her head as though they were lying next to each other and tried, just for a second, to imagine herself into the miracles she’d heard about. You wake up in the morning and someone else is there. Maybe this someone is already up and looking at you. And because you are loved, you do not think about the crust in your eyes or the eruptive skin events that have uglied your face overnight, just that this person is pressing his forehead to yours and saying hello and about to peck your lips, and because his own are so pledged in love for you, this contact seems to reprise the first kiss you ever had, because every first kiss, in its fumbling and tender way, promises the world, which means that this person who loves you has just woken you up in elegy and homage for the happiest you have ever been.
She leaned in closer. And thought: So what if he’s wearing a hood? Maybe this is better. Except just then he turned away and got on his back and arced his pelvis, which probably had to do with the cuffs and not because arousal is passed by osmosis. Either way, she did not think, just clamped her two hands over his mouth and straddled his lap.
He bucked, nearly threw her off, but she got in his ear and whispered fast, “Shhh, don’t wake the others,” and he did not buck again.
“What are you doing?” he said. “Get off me.”
“No.”
“You’re out of your handcuffs? Take off my hood.”
“No.”
“Are you crazy? What’s happening?” And when she started to rub up and down his groin, he said, “Okay, stop it. You’re scaring me.”
“What if I did it like this?” and she reached for him with her hand. “Is that better?”
“Please, stop. I don’t want to do this.”
But Anne-Janet was not listening. She unsnapped his coverall and tried to kiss her way down his stomach the way she’d seen. Ned rolled onto his side; she rolled with him. Finally, he got on his stomach and clenched his body so tight there was no way to get at him.
She backed away as though smacked. “Oh my God,” she said, and she started to cry.
“Can you take off my hood now?” he said. “It’s okay. We’re all freaking out.”
“Oh my God,” she said. “I have to get out of here.”
“Wait,” he said. Hissing almost. “Anne-Janet!” He got up and staggered in the direction of her voice.
“I am so sorry,” she said. “I’m a freak.”
“You are not. Just calm down.”
But she was already at the rebar grille, gripping the ribs until they gave, and out she went like
the Incredible Hulk or one of those animals with the opposable thumbs escaping the zoo and running for its life.
She had not cried violently in years, but now the tears were coming so fast she could barely see where she was going. The house was much bigger than it had appeared from the outside—the multiple hallways and doors and rooms—and behind each, who knew, a guard in wait for the first hostage to escape. She wiped her face and ran.
The floors were tessellated and smooth underfoot, peel-back linoleum. The walls were bare and the lighting a spine of halogen bulbs recessed into the ceiling. So many ways to go, but when she heard footsteps and voices on her tail, she booked for the nearest door, which was locked. Same for each after that. Finally she just sprinted down the hall, thinking it had to go somewhere, which it did. A giant kitchen.
She made for the island, opened the sous-cabinet doors, and prayed there’d be room enough to hide among the pots, pans, colanders, lids, and dozen candy thermometers. She prayed in vain; the lights went on.
“What the hell?” said Vicki, reaching for the nearest blunt-force-trauma object, which was a steel spatula.
“Jesus crap,” said Charlotte. “You scared the Jesus crap out of me.” She was pressing her heart and fanning the air in front of her lips.
Anne-Janet was holding a Calphalon stockpot overhead. Her arms were trembling with the strain, so she bucked her head at Vicki’s spatula—an equine gesture, part nod, part rear—to propose détente. It worked. They laid down their arms.
Vicki sat up on the counter and brushed her feet against the drawers. She was wearing a rubber halter top latticed across the sides with chain mail that clipped up fishnet thigh-highs and matching thong. Charlotte went to a utility closet for a spool of duct tape. Anne-Janet backed into a corner and raised her fists. She’d seen enough martial arts on TV to know that if she chambered properly and kept her weight distributed, pulled back with one arm while releasing her jab, she was gonna get killed.
“What’s wrong with you?” Charlotte said. “I hardly think we’re the enemy.” She sat on the floor and began to wrap her boot, which was split at the toe like a duck’s bill.
“We’re just TCs,” Vicki said. “Ex-TCs.” She reached for a roll of paper towels and tossed it at Anne-Janet.
“Traveling Companions,” Charlotte said. “You’ll know soon enough. We keep Thurlow company while he makes company for everyone else.” And even though she was annoyed about the ransom tape, she said these words admiringly.
Anne-Janet scanned in her head the dossiers of everyone living here. She was still weeping, but the towels helped. “So you two are the prostitutes? Because I have a bunch of you on file, a Swede and some others, but nothing about you two.”
“Oh fuck a duck,” Charlotte said. “You’re one of the spies? I thought you were the new TC.”
“No way,” Vicki said. “Like a TC would ever look like that.”
Despite all, Anne-Janet was hurt.
Vicki jumped off the counter. Her ass had left a steam print on the marble. “Oh fun,” she said, and pointed to her thong, which had lost purchase, so that Anne-Janet could see her mons, bald but for a cross of pubic hair. “It’s supposed to be a capital T,” Vicki said, and covered up. “But I get lazy. Funny, though, right? T for Thurlow, except it looks like Jesus on my cunt.”
Anne-Janet began to make for the door. “I think I’m going to go,” she said. “Except, should I be worried you guys saw me? Because I think we all know what I’m trying to do here.”
“Sweetie, look at you. You been through enough.” This from Charlotte, who was done with her boots and checking her watch.
“Plus,” said Vicki, “the whole house is under surveillance, so it’s pretty safe to assume someone besides me saw what just happened in your cell. So, you know, do what you feel.”
“Oh God,” Anne-Janet said, and slunk to the floor. She pressed her face into the roll of paper towels and began to wet through one sheet at a time. “Can you get me out of here? I can’t breathe in this place. I can’t deal.”
“Not exactly,” Vicki said. “But you can come with us. Charlotte’s got an appointment in the Sub.”
“A special procedure,” Charlotte said, and she beamed like summer sun. “I’ve been waiting for this for six months. Get my labia fixed. Snipped and tucked.”
Anne-Janet stared up at her but just could not summon the words.
“I’m happy for you,” Vicki said. “But just for the record, I think big lips are nice.”
Charlotte frowned. “They’re gross.” But then she laughed and said, “You know, at first, when I heard all the trouble outside, all I could think was that if the feds busted up the place before my vaginoplasty—! So I’ve been praying. And here we are.”
Vicki shrugged. “With your luck, I bet they storm the OR just when your pussy’s in a clamp.”
“Nice,” Charlotte said. And then, to Anne-Janet, “So you want to come?”
“Yes,” she said. “Only, to get this straight, it’s not in the house, right? We’ll have to leave?”
“Of course. This isn’t wire hangers in your poon or anything. It’s totally state-of-the-art. At the clinic.”
“The clinic.”
Charlotte and Vicki exchanged a look. Vicki said, “Now, wait just a minute. I thought you were an agent. Like with the government and all that. I know Thurlow is always saying you people are incompetent and don’t know anything, but come on. You’re messing with us, right? You can trust me, I’m in the know.”
Anne-Janet shrugged. Took a gamble. “There’s lots of clinics, I can’t keep track of everything the Helix does. But whatever,” she said, and she hugged the roll. “Lead the way. Just get me out of here.”
Charlotte said, “The Sub’s not Helix. No way. It’s just private enterprise down there.”
“Yee-haw capitalism,” Vicki said. “But I don’t have an extra set of gloves.” Charlotte didn’t either. “I bet there’s some by the hatch. If not, it’s no big deal. Just try not to hold the rope too tight.”
Anne-Janet followed them out of the kitchen, through a supply closet, to a mudroom staffed with hiking boots. Vicki traded her stilettos for Timberlands, and said, “Why is the black pair always out? I hate these camel ones. They don’t match at all.”
Anne-Janet looked her over. “I think maybe it’s just a clash of styles,” she ventured.
“Well, somebody’s been reading Glamour,” said Charlotte.
Vicki snorted. She harried the slack in her fishnets and revolved the hasp lock about her neck so that it faced front. “All set,” she said. “Let’s rock.”
Vicki and Charlotte got on either end of an oval floor mat and pushed it aside to expose a door. There was some talk about the code, and when was the last Thurlow changed it because if you entered the wrong code more than twice, it would lock you out for good. They looked to Anne-Janet, who said Vicki had it right, and since they really wanted to believe she knew things, they gave it a go, and presto, the door clicked free. It was a long way down, and immediately Anne-Janet understood the wisdom of gloves as she abraded her hands on the rope ladder.
So these were the tunnels. She’d read about them. A tunnel scheme fanned out beneath the streets of Cincinnati, the plan grown from a precept that said anything can be accomplished with money. Contractors hired by the city to oversee municipal planning, and in whose yawning regard for the work little got done—these people could be bought. And so they were. Nothing blasts through limestone better than graft.
She figured they’d walk through the tunnels and come up through some manhole in Kentucky. She figured they’d be there soon. Hoped, in any case. It smelled like dead squirrel. The linoleum of the house flooring had given way to a duff-like substance that squished underfoot. Crawling was out, stooping was in. If you stood upright, you’d graze your skull against the roof, which was slimed in moisture. The TCs wore caps. It all made sense.
They had fallen in line and said little. It seemed to Anne-Jan
et an hour had passed. Her hands were starting to feel like pulled pork. A blister on the gunwale of her big toe had just released fluid into her sock. These were not good developments. This was not a sterile environment. They came to a fork.
“Which way?” said Charlotte.
“Oh, fuck me,” said Vicki, and again they turned to Anne-Janet.
“What?” she said. “Like I memorized the blueprints? How should I know?”
They went left. They should have gone right.
Eventually, they spotted light slewing beneath a door at the far end of the tunnel. They were accustomed to the dark, so already, from this distance, they had to blink and squint. It seemed possible, for all their left turns, that they were back where they started, in which case a more circumspect fugitive might have hewn to the wall and crept up on the door for the purpose of surveillance. But no. Anne-Janet was too tired to care. She trotted up to the door and gasped for the pain in her foot.
“I wouldn’t do that,” Vicki said. Anne-Janet pressed on.
The door was more vault than door, and locked from the inside. In fact, there was no handle or knob to let them in, just an intercom and button.
“What’s the big deal?” Anne-Janet said. “It looks like a bank.”
“But it’s not,” Charlotte said. “Could be many things, but not a bank. Let’s go, okay?”
“Why?”
“Because,” Vicki drawled, “if you don’t belong here, bad things happen. You need an appointment for every place in the Sub.” And when Anne-Janet pushed for more, they betrayed a brochure’s worth of info, highlights of the Subterrain: Below the Garfield Suites Hotel, a brothel full of Singapore girls, codified by an airline, fetishized by a nation. In the cellar of the Verdin Bell and Clock Museum, access to the operations center of a Deepnet marketplace for counterfeit money and contraband of the month. There was gambling. Ultimate fighting between inmates sprung from Queensgate jail for this purpose. A sweatshop for the sewing of official Major League baseballs, the work farmed out by Rawlings’s Costa Rica factory, where the oft-suspected juicing of the ball occurred. There were maps for sale online, though you had to know where to look, and the maps were not cheap. There were passwords to be bought. Security clearance. There were in the tunnels only people who belonged, attired according to venue, which is why three women in costume (two whores and an electrician) were able to tour the spread unremarked, the consensus of any observers being that they hailed from or were headed to Flaunt, in which you impersonated who you wanted to be and were applauded for it. The Sub was decades old. It had probably started with an underground speakeasy and proliferated from there.